ISRAEL

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POEM 
(translated from Hebrew by Helena Berg)

This poem will be a poem of another century, not different from this one. 
This poem will be securely concealed    under heaps of words, until 

between the last sand grains of the hourglass, 
like a ship inside a bottle, it will be seen, this poem: 

the poem that will speak of innocence.  And common people that ostensibly 
were shaped by time, like tardy gods, 

will listen to it for no reason that wasn't there before, 
rise their backs like snakes 

from the junk,    and there won't be anywhere else 
to hurry from, and it won't have an end 

different from its beginning.  It won't be rich 
and won't be poor.  It won't bother anymore to promise 

and keep or carry out its utterances 
and won't scrimp, or sail there from here. 

This poem, if it will speak to you, woman, it won't call you 
muse-babe, and won't lie with you like its fathers; 

or if to you, man, it won't kneel or kill, won't apply makeup 
and won't take off its words and flesh, as it has not    has not -- 

what.  Maybe now I'll call it here, the bad poem 
of the century: here, sick with health    it barely walks 

drags its legs in the viscous current    of thoughts of the time 
or is stopped to show papers    and to have its trivia counted 

with arithmetical beads.  The inventory:  flowers and staples, 
corpses (yes, no worry), tall glasses.  After staples -- 

also butterflies, and many footprints    and other hooks and shelves 
for the arguments of scholarly criticism, and also just to fool around, teeth 

against teeth, in the anarchic smiles of a chameleon    that doesn't know 
its colours have long since turned into a parable.  Or in incomprehensible tranquility 

to try someone else's luck in games of 
to and fro    that have no goal other than, let's say, 

a bit of fun the length of a line.  Spread orange on the blue 
of evening sky: now, plaster a little cloud.  Climb 

on it, see below: sea of sea, sand of sand. 
Or fingers.  Ten jointed worms 

move in inexplicable charm.  Now they encircle 
a ball whose circle is faulty, wonderful, fleshy,     further more, 

you may say a word (it's a fruit, it's called 
a peach).  And these words    their taste is full of the taste of 

its being, of a tone that accompanies the sight with wonder 
and not with a thought-slamming sound.  And this is the poem: 

it sings, let's say, to the tar that stuck to the foot on the shore, 
to plastic bottles, to its own words.  It 

only sees: black atop white, transparent, or grainy. 
It is not less naked than you.  Also no more.  Only in this exactness 

that has no measure, but by the curves of a female-dog, 
a pot of cyclamens, or a hair strand on a bathtub railing. 

The creatures here don't want to know.  The creatures 
there, that only want, are, for now, a possibility 

of becoming the creatures that are here, of becoming this antiquity 
that has nothing to say other than me, me, without limit 

without you.  A dog lies on a step in the afternoon 
sun, and does not distinguish itself from the flies. 

I Look Through the Monkeys' Eyes 
Translated by Irit Sela

I look through the monkeys' eyes, 
as they play with my skull in the treetops. 
I'm lifted with the eagle as he flies 
because my entrails are in his; 
in the belly of the earth 
I crawl with worms 
who ate my eyes out of my sockets; 
I am green, I grow in the grass 
That my rotting flesh makes rich. 

O my body 
How you have grown! 

Epitaph 
Translated by Vivian Eden

O walker, leave the path a while, 
sit among the berry trees and vines, 
water and trees and stone so white. 
Here I, a boy and king, do lie. 

My face cold marble, my hands, my feet. 
I am dressed in ferns and fallen leaves. 
I too never went far afield 
I too once lived and breathed. 

O walker, leave the path a space, 
crush wild berries on my face.

© All Copyright, 2000, Amir Or.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.