GUARDIAN ANGEL

In the 40`s, in the Valley of Jezreel,
while visiting relatives in "Zeronia",
my mother took me along
into the women`s section of the public showers.
The six=year=old in me was compelled
to watch how above, between the ivory
columns of muscular thighs, the thick forest
of womanhood wildy grows.
And then, like in the movies: a split second
before he desecrated the open robes
of some stray mom - I slipped on a wet floor,
suffused with the good odors of soap,
and the angel who blankets the eyes of the newborn
instantly blanketed me with a hard blow,
a torn eyebrow and a bleeding cut.
But there are nights when I must return
to that same arena, go back once more
to the old crime, and without a watchful angel
I turn back, peek at the forbidden:
without his hand obscuring my memory,
and without the blessed miracle of his vigilance.

Trans. by Tsipi Keler.

FERRIS WHEEL

In the Casino, under Hatzbaya,
spring water rumble,
imprisoned in coves of concrete,
bolting racing spinning to press out
powerfully driving a rusty Ferris wheel,
a remnant of forgotten fairs.
On the torn lattice seat
I notice a Druze kid
flying, letting out a shout:
an unforgettable landscape
is suddenly revealed to him.
In the dense grasses all around
the blackened corpses of tanks,
an ashen mound, helmets, abandoned gear
roll about, swept south down the river
toward a blinding horizon
toward places that even from the top of the
wheel
one can only guess at the distance.

Trans. by Tsipi Keler, 1997.

MIGRATING BIRDS
for Shaul, my son.

Above the Stella Maris lighthouse
two hundred pelicans in flight.
The air is heavy today, and their flapping sluggish
across the graying sea,
above the green mountain cliffs.
Like an arrowhead pitched north
they join head to tail
forging a blocked secure formation.
All at once their line breaks
their feathers scatter
from the threat of the spinning chopper
descending toward roofs,
urgently, despairingly, seeking
the center of the bright square:
the landing tract of "Ramba`m Hospital" on sea.

Trans. by Tsipi Keler, 1997.