writing workshops
"The spirit that emanates from this book is what I call holiness. If I, the one writing about this book, could simply copy it, and even punctuate it out, without saying another word about it, I would do so. These verses - finally - are a worthy confrontation with what Yehuda Amichai left behind."
Yitzhak Laor, 'Haaretz', Culture and Literature Supplement, 5.6.09
"The most powerful poetry numbers of recent years"
Yakir Ben Moshe, 'Haaretz', Books Supplement, 8.7.09
"Courage and talent, great determination to be precise, and a firm hand that holds an iron pen"
Eli Hirsch, Yedioth Ahronoth, 6.3.09
WE COULD HAVE LIVED SO WELL, YOU SAY, AND GAZE AT HER, STILL PRETTY
translated my Marcela Sulak
In a little while Shabbat in the Sharon, and traffic lights take off their red, and the laces unravel and yield the bare foot, and the records of the word gather into a book and rest from their anxiousness to break, and the change in the wallet emphasizes the victory of the many and the small, and the expiration dates on the milk do not threaten to be expired, and the first fruits are relaxing in sealed bags, and the ice in the freezer assumes the shape of the most self confident mold, and the Styrofoam separates into small balls that do not need the practical, and the central air does not apologize for deceiving the heat, and the screens do not apologize for deceiving the brightness, and the poetry switches off the linoleum floor and switches on the ceiling,
and the adolescents are softer and are not putting off thank you, and what is piling up is piling up, and what is split is split, and the clouds ponder the field, and the field ponders the fish that float among the bushes in their imagination, and in the vineyards, grapes turn into raisins, others into wine, and not all the sweet ones are contaminated with maggots of worry, and he who asks for a deluge does not intend annihilation, but only a hard, streaming rain, and the community leaders return from the road, gathering
a family to themselves, and generosity is being seen as a quiet virtue and not for display, and mistakes are removed from the heart of things, and the body's exchanges are just, and the public domain is full of permissions, and the private domains are full,
and the fruits have set a tenth aside and do not miss the missing part, but are lighter, sweetness is intensified, every branch that crossbreeds accedes to him with whom it was crossbred, and the bulbs open themselves to the outside, and the bees imagine the honey, and the trees get themselves a new king according to the vigor of the
blooming, and the asphalt conquers the earth and liberates the best of her on the side of the road,
and Tamar and Amnon have moved into a pansy, where they are making cakes out of the colors, and the dust is withdrawing before the pollination, and every drizzle is the chance of a rainbow, and the green that is in the bushes almost overwhelms the leaves, and in the old people's lawn that surrounds you the water sprinklers of winter open, and, indeed, there is suddenly a good southern wind,
only that she doesn't answer when you ask, sparing you the nothingness, and her wrinkles multiply at once as if the little girl inside her were shrinking her into herself, and your words glide on the slope of her nose when you lean on your cane, looking at her, looking at the blossoming, looking at the asphalt (we could have lived so well, you say) remembering the earth.
*
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2009 Closing In, Kibbutz Hameuhad Publishing House
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BEGGAR
translated by Marcela Sulak
You promised me, you say. So I promised, I say.
And the words create a bowl,
and they knock against it like a beggar.
You promised me, you say. So I promised, I say.
And the words create a bowl,
and they knock against it like a beggar.
You promised me, you say. So I promised, I say.
And the words create a bowl,
and they knock against it like a beggar.
*
From Songs to a Dead Woman
translated by Marcela Sulak
You
1.
When you rose up in the elevator, you were not holding
her in your arms.
When you streched out in bed, you were not holding her
in your arms.
When you opened the window, you were not holding her
in your arms.
When you took the dizziness pills, you were not holding
her in your arms.
She lays in bed, your daughter. From time to time she cries out in her sleep. 0
People gather, bobbing their heads around her blanket,
bobbing like all her childhood seesaws, gathering
against her.
Move over, children; let her go first.
You rose through floor after flood,
the umbilical cord adrift behind you
like the ribbon of a gift
that will never be given.
2.
Which belly did I come out of, your daughter is asking at bedtime, where is this belly, what is it holding now.
Your Daughter
1.
Her black eyes remember how you went away and didn't come back.
and you left only the color in her pupils as a souvenir.
2.
Behold, who is this that cometh up from the kindergarten,
laying down her drawings in which I am not drawn.
She scatters the grains of rice on the plate to create a thin lace.
And she does not give a single word away.
May the air between us not be filled even for a moment.
From the window you can see the playground,
which is painted in primary colors,
colors simple and pretty,
so close to the house.
3.
Sometimes it seems as if closeness were possible,
as between two consonants of a word
written with diacritical marks.
But only the frame
catches the slamming door
in its two hands.
The handle straightens like a blank line.
Your Husband
1.
Two boxes in the bedroom.
Photos of the first wedding above photos of the second.
In one he bends toward me or toward you.
His large hand is binding.
2.
The baby's first kick didn't excite him as a first kick.
His eyes lit up and went dark
like the blink of a silent siren.
3.
Sometimes in the morning your name is spoken,
rushing our speech so as not to tread on you by accident.
Most of the time you are lying there, quiet,
a room that hasn't been swept.
4.
Curse of Rachel and Leah burning in me,
this curse of she who does not know which of them is she.