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Poems

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I am one of the countless many Who were commanded by a sign and letter, And so that I will stand by my right To ascend to the Heavens, Frozen-faced soldiers march in lines Holding their flag in impure hands. Lonely for my soul, abandoned from humans I will march silently between their two lines And my feet are bare. And they - each one within himself, for my sake And for my honor - They stand tall and bow deeply To count the number of lashings on my back. I am one of the countless many that watch the sight of a prepared stage Dry wood - for a bonfire, A remembrance of bonfires from the distant past. Cavalries gather in market square My eyes watch the sparks of destruction. Tongues of fire are approaching and coming - A red flame around my forehead, before my eyes, Coming and grabbing my wild Hair

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I want to say Kaddish In the word that says black is black And mourning is mourning, without solace and without a day, And only the night alone will remain, The icy night in my heart, the eternal night without light. To say Kaddish for the summers that were destroyed forever, To the wells that have run dry in heart of a white desert, To extinguished stars that fell from a pure sky Just like flint stones, without any logic: To the death of all tears, Which have not broken the grace of God. (Translated from Yiddish :Avigdor Hameiri)

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44. People live their little lives every day And their great distress Jews pray, repent, They bless, say Hallel, fulfill their obligation. Houses of worship and lecterns stand empty. The synagogue dreams a dream, the Holy Ark To Ne'ilah prayer… An altar, a human altar full of death. The heavens rose upward. and our prayers wonder “Forgive us, pardon us, grant us atonement.” Ten days of repentance. The coast is foreign and closed. The altar is open. The dream cries out and crumbles from the lips Shards of broken fate. Sometimes the siren will wail loudly, And no one sees, because my brother will not find rest On the surface of the earth. Alone is sorrow, and the grief is very lonely. Where did we meet, life and me? On the narrow path, where the great snipers appeared,

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Life is near and memory emerges Like the sun pouring down on the grain field. Where did life and I meet? On a narrow path, where time blows the horn, The destruction of nations is dying there. And the riddle of the nations is valid there. … Ten Days of Penance on a foreign shore. Horrible days. The wall is a city of refuge for us. The dispersed there fill our memory. The men in the tower dull our minds. Commemoration. Pray for the souls. The souls of the martyrs Those who were buried and were not buried .– Tens of thousands of martyrs with the Punishment of the Grave and without it. Without any registration. Please remind them where you are and who you are, You. We are who we are, both inside and outside. Please do not separate us on the road. The flame of malice circles over our heads And time blinds our sight with a cruel blow, Please do not delay us in the terrible days of change. To live means to remember. At the end of time we will remember the night. In the terrible days of the change. You.

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52. From the depths! wings to despair black wings, but do not pluck them. And do not count the wounds. Please measure with the measurements you have. They have not proven that they can Measure our endless suffering. Please measure what will not be measured. Please do not console, but do not forget, You are everywhere, at every moment and in every movement. You hear everything before it is even a word. The sun is an open wound, suffocating the sky, And drowns out the sound of our cries. From the depths! Please measure what is neither of this world nor of the world to come. Measured what remained as a stone in the throat And struck the brain with blindness, that burned the eye Which has no tears. From the depths! Under the rock that weighs on the forehead I called you. I will not be able to hear my own scream…

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54. God deserted the night guards. The night is abandoned. Humans hang on the trees Their hands behind their backs. In the desert steppes, men freeze with fingers pressed to the rifle trigger. The sea is torn in two, and from the sky volcanoes fall. There is no redeemer and no healer, The night is abandoned, the day, the world.

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69. The crows are terribly busy They did not herald the arrival of winter. We did not have time to prepare for it with respect, Because hunger marches on both sides of the wall From house to house, from country to country. Fever roses on his cheeks, Upside-down eyes, crooked neck, He walks with long soft steps Without any echo, On wide, open roads, In fear of winter, thieves, tomorrow, Without any echo. Hunger is full of doubts, Full of scaffolds in the market, And wherever you turn hanging together. In the forests in the market square Along the length of the wall Many deaths go without a name, In prison camps, in unclaimed land, There my brothers die, die Without any echo, without any echo.

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Come, my brother, there is no security, the moon turned red like crimson, And the trees wept bitterly on that very day, The sky rained down a hail of stones And the horn swallowed up all that was alive. Come, my brother, God forsook his soul And he is lost and lonely somewhere on the plane, With his hands he locked every gate with a bolt for him Do not show him how he expelled himself, Come, please hold my hand and do not look back. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah grow with shame Since God has wandered, the whole earth is a tear. Ships wander without a sound And other stars stand completely aside. The Vale of Tears is stormy in a whirlwind of passions. Please hold my hand, brother, and do not try to investigate to know How the wheels turn, and if the mills grind New Vales of Tears, Come, my brother, there's no time to stand still In a storm, when the smoke brings the smell of fire And the world without a guard…

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Sleep, my brother, sleep. The edges of the forest are trampled black And pillars of blackness redden the sky. Hungry herds run without a shepherd, On a galloping white horse hangs a rider without a skull. Green eagle, like grass Screaming a death hymn without cantillation notes. Sleep, my brother, sleep. Sleep and guard the ring. The period is long, and thin is the chain, Guard the ring with eyes closed, There in the market they took off again New flocks of green birds, Sleep, my brother, and guard the ring… Sleep, my child Once upon a time there was a king… Messiah son of David bound in handcuffs The day slowly turns like a fragment of a sharp teardrop Which was swallowed by the night.

[Page 226 Hebrew] [Page 228 Yiddish]

Between Kosow and Kitev. There is a golden well In its deep clear water, I found a sun. At night the mountains turned gray I will give the sun as a gift. And in golden crimson All the roads bloom. I am a lost son, The son of a simple tailor, I wasted the years of my youth To wander in the wind and sail. Now I have found them Now they're forever mine. The light of the roads has darkened And the amazing golden shine.

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Slowly and with a happy soul I walk along a path in the valley. Gray roads - will they understand The great golden light? The bright word on the lips, The golden ray in the hand I am the last of the heralds Of newly discovered land. Between Kosow and Kitev. There is a golden well In its deep clear water, I found a sun.

Original footnote:

1. The poem was translated from Yiddish by Binyamin Tene and published in the book “Poems and Ballads,” Al HaMishmer Publication. Return

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But Sloping between mountains Confident Distant in the sea of yesterday Wading In the cool river and laughing This is you, The coveted. Ancient splendor, Wide open spaces The sun caresses up to the ridge, The snow Thaws under your protection Somewhere Pinecones in the wind A rickety bridge Visible from the distance.

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A river channel is rising, flooding your arteries to the end until blood flows - And schoolchildren. A valley Shrouded in fog - - Golden ripe grain half asleep interwoven in two forms Light And shadow Moon Reveals itself - - And a voice calling Strong fortress in the sky - - - Silent cliff

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I have a sea full of cold nights warming me Over the years. I have an eternity of small objects Through the gray ashes Moans will howl. I wander on your path to listen To your song of sorrow. You are sleeping, Far away, bound to my eyes You turn around and go Return in front of me – An upright tree falls on my shoulders. The water returned and cut off. I am searching for the riddles of the night. The days are full of mysteries of the night. Shadows harden the heart The night.

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Nine months deeper, neither sound nor melody Prayers seek their purpose, I divert them to a world Mute like them. The moon in its silence quietly opens to me Like endless riddles to laugh and cry Up and down, only the fire and the cloud connect a seam Rubbing against time, shrugging off the days A clay jug lives within his soul, neither sound nor melody Blood winking from under the olive tree bark Something is knocking on the palate, a star passes from the abyss of consciousness Sparkling and ringing with lightning in the dance of love for God There's no place for the secret that disappears around the light The shadow does not exist to outline a sign and a witness The sea that spoke harshly climbs up to me in silence Nine months deeper A stone locked it so that it would never be seen again. The bleeding river The poem was published in “Psipas” issue 3, June 1988

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Interwoven with flowers, azure without a sea A purpose without a sky, to eternity I passed by Conflicted as if in a dream traveled so deeply We will flourish in the grace of no one's forgetfulness At the crossroads above the mountains until the dark pain Frost envelops them, oh oh the sea is moving Hide within itself yesterday and tomorrow Several eyes, a broken melody Without Hebrew cantillation, I'm in the midst and the road is erased Interwoven with flowers, the wind is short to harvest And it seems the scythes tend to sleep in a different field The mind knowingly creates patterns without purpose Without tools, while I wait for the four-fringe garment There in the dome reigns the Zodiac Princess Shedding a tear at the gate The poem was published in “Psipas” issue 3, June 1988

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Thousands of sights of marionettes Thin ankles at the apex of the sun And in the mountains' ores peaks and valleys merge In myriad bouquets of lilac Fading flute trumpets sing Sun, sun, blinding sun A butterfly emerges from the light, It is not red or white - I lift it to my mouth and close my eyes Before the day enters the sea This is a rush to nowhere enough to deceive the face of the sun The frost weaves wedding clothes, I am lighter Hands tremble and shake in vain - Bright stones in the mirror, sun, adorn yourself, sing a song Gather them in blue ostrich feathers The vast river in reddish ash These trees breathe mercilessly and the eagles Pass by and disappear. The poem was published in “Psipas” issue 3, June 1988

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Respite, endless rounded corners Where and from where? Will the soul overwhelm us? What about these hills dripping from the wilderness Confused visions, silent loneliness, field of thorns Life and dying flutter in a repulsive alley And the immortal forests out of an eyelid They sprout with me here behind the masts They emerge again when you cry No one will count them quietly on their flight To the place of the three Patriarchs Someone is drawing lines on the shadow Shadows hidden in quivers are the hour hand And in the meantime when you sail across the seas Tested by time until the horizon breaks the sound waves Of the far distant future Only the rainbow in the cloud and this flickering star And the neglected leaning bridge – what have I to do with it? At night we hear the whisper of a secret that took off too high Jumping from an endless pool of tears Relying on my consistency The poem was first published in “Psipas,” issue 3, June 1988

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With every hour of grace, it is the missing time That uprooted the night's eye, oh, the simple things That you don't see above the shadows is blindness A caress blooms over the brains to live abundantly, to be awake From fin to fin, injustice is called in the market Snow and hail in Kitov, forgiveness, the hopping game Pigeons in flight, flowing, moving, breathing The cargo of the tent migration at the Eastern Wall Tabernacle Braided crowns dismembered into pieces Oh, above a gaping shoe, charred as gold gaining momentum I come from east to the west, hairy glaciers The one who never shed a tear or heard a footstep Time slips from his hands, love rang for him The fire that rises from the pile of wood utters the name The sound that slipped into your head plays before the light dims Alef, Beit, Yod are intertwined, all the names are rolling And so, wearing a helmet, I turn a blind eye to the corner of silence And the immortal next to the crucified, blood flow on Mount Moriah The stone opens up, wants to dive above the cloud Into which Abraham threw himself as a celestial angel Between Rahab of Sodom and Balaam from the speech Without a choice I become a dancing golem I will not know how they passed and succeeded him before they died Sailing and swaying like a laughing goldfinch descending upon us in a circle The dead will scour it The poem was first published in “Psipas.”

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