NEW TRANSLATIONS
LITERATURE,
HISTORY, & PHILOSOPHY
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The
Shortest Journey
1. Tel Aviv, 1935
The flagpoles on the roofs of homes
were like the masts of
and each crow that perched on them
conjured another continent.
Travelers’ knapsacks walked through the streets
and the language of a foreign land
was thrust like the cold blade of a
knife
into the hot desert wind.
How did the air of that small city
find a way to bear
memories of childhood, lovers shed,
rooms emptied somewhere?
Like pictures blackening inside a camera,
clear winter nights were
reversed,
with rainy summers across the sea,
and foggy mornings of capital cities.
As the sound of marching behind your back
drums a foreign army’s songs,
it seems, as you turn your head to
the sea,
your city’s church is floating.
2. An Evening in a Café
The city’s in the colored coat
of awnings over balconies,
clear wine shining in lanterns
and light in the drinks blurring.
Scraps of a squabble and a rush
of chatter, cutlery. High in the sky,
lights have erased from the
blackboard
an old accounting of the stars.
Short-tempered and severe,
the sea behind our backs
tracks and charts our beating hearts
in a secret pact with my watch.
Only the very young can grasp
the value and meaning of time,
with its nights gone astray
and all we give away
each moment vainly passing.
And like an incredible nightmare
there across the street, an old
man passes, slowly:
he has no reason to hurry.
3. Rainy Autumn Night and a Clear Morning
Into a dark, opaque night
whose alleys
only the jackals know,
the city was thrown:
dressed in white,
unprotected
from lashes of rain,
the rebuke of thunder,
an old sea’s stolen caress.
together with us
and our lives—
but the bright morning opened her
prison
and here—
black circles beneath her damp
lashes—
white she is, and not fair
without a past or prideful air—
how beautiful was her youth!
4. She Still Had
She still had the scent of the sea,
of shells, orange peels, the warm
wind of almost-summer,
and the magic, bewildering grace
that twice entices a dream.
Embraced by water and light, a hundred ripples
held in her a taste of salt,
longing—
my insatiable youth, my parched
sands,
all my crowns of sadness scorning the
kingdom—
and the city, a white island on green
waves.
5. Then I Walked Through the World
Then I walked through the world
as though someone adored me.
Laughter unfurled through heaps of stones,
and a wind through fathomless skies.
Then I walked through the world
as though someone dreamed me lovely.
and the sea’s mirror painted my
face, as though
someone were writing poems about me.
I walked, until I reached an utter stillness within:
there, it seemed, something might
begin.
6. The Shortest Journey
The shortest journey is across the years.
The light has not gone out. The house teeters,
a wall bends. And here they stand
together like neighbors,
my night of now, my day of then.
What could they have said: We’re changing, aging?
The shortest journey is into the past.
Do you remember? A cool sea, two boats touching,
children on a hill have lifted a
torch—
Are we aging? Changing? Know this: until tomorrow,
such long hours await me.
Translated
by Annie Kantar
© Copyright New Translations.
The journal is affiliated with the
Comparative Literature Department at The Graduate Center of the City University
of New York. It is published with the support of the Doctoral Student Council.
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