LANGUAGE  SAYS

Language says: before language
stands a language.  Language is traces
stained by over there.			
Language says: listen now.
You listen: here was					
	echo.

Take silence and try to be silent.
Take the words and try to speak:
beyond language, language is a wound
from which the world flows and flows.
Language says: is, is not, is, 
is not.  Language says: I.
Language says: come on, let’s speak you,
let’s handle you; come on, say
you’ve said –    
Translated from Hebrew by Fiona Sampson and the author

The Barbarians (Round Two)
It was not in vain that we awaited the barbarians,
it was not in vain that we gathered in the city square.
It was not in vain that our great ones donned their official robes
and rehearsed their speeches for the event.
It was not in vain that we smashed our temples
and erected new ones to their gods;
as proper we burnt our books
that have nothing in them for people like that.
As the prophesy foretold, the barbarians came
and took the keys to the city from the king’s hand.
But when they came they donned the garments of the land,
and their customs were the customs of the state;
and when they commanded us in our own tongue
we no longer knew when
the barbarians had come to us.

Translated by Vivian Eden



A GLASS OF BEER

The perfect murder has no reasons, he said, 
the perfect murder needs only a perfect object,
as it was in Auschwitz.
Not the crematoria, of course, but as it was
afterwards, outside working hours.
And he fell silent
looking at the froth on the beer
and taking a sip.

The perfect murder is love, he said.
The perfect murder doesn’t require anything perfect
except giving
as much as you can.
Even the memory of gripping the throat
is eternal. Even the howls that rocked my hand,
even the piss that fell like grace on cold flesh,
even the heel of the boot awakens another eternity,
even the silence,
he said,
looking at the froth.

True, a decent arbeit  macht frei, 
but a perfect murder doesn’t spill
a drop,
like the lips of a child, he explained,
like sand and froth,
like you, 
listening,
sipping and listening

Translated from Hebrew by  Theo Dorgan, Tony Curtis, McDara Woods



SOME SAY

Some say life is continuing in the face of the alternative;  
some say - conquest; some stretch an equals sign	

between life and its absence; and some say that life
was given us to serve those       whose lives 

are not a life.  I say: you.
And this is easily explained: once again night envelops 

what can be seen.  At home lamps are lit.  And in the light there’s no glance
except the one from the mirror, nothing except what sees me

seeing it; and it brings not release but longing, not death 	
but life.  And I take from this gaze the warm and the cold – night envelopes everything

and I long for the one who sees me through touching, 	
and I don’t remember a thing.  Only this.

Translated from Hebrew by Helena Berg 



El AMOR BRUJO

How to say this?  You’re too close to bear,
you are fruit bursting in the heart,
you are the name the dumb mouth bears
like sea in the earth’s palm.
I touch, and envy my touching hand;
touching, I yearn to touch.

Terror of this motionless moment:
you are here inside here inside here.
Here the soul-fire burns, burns.
The heart unconsumed.

Translated from Hebrew by Fiona Sampson and the author



THE RIGHT VIEW

And if I would have portrayed for you 
this soft bluish light
the tremulous reflection of the poplar in the water
when a convoy of ducks is crossing the pond 
and beyond the circular shore line
the bushes and the bay and the green mountain
melting into the cloud-sky in the rain –

wouldn't you search my eyes       with a prying searchlight 
shoot a duck or two      down between the lines
and pray for the monster 	  to emerge from the sea
and gape open upon your flesh      a sky-high mouth
to redeem you 	
   from this divine dullness?

But there's no need. Here,     I'm sketching it for you – 
the beams and the nails 	  the convulsions  	   the pain
wave after wave 	  in his butterfly's wings –
your glowing faces		the landscape	
and finally          his wonderful cry 	
the pleasure-strike hitting      into your flesh    
the quivering thrill –

Just one more minute. Patience.       I'm almost      
finished.



A CORRECTION

for the sin of being spoiled with words and mistaking the call of Love; 
for turning away from myself like shadow from body, face from heart;
for the sin of ‘What will they say?’; for self denial; for pride;
for the sin of having followed the spell of praise under the stage lights;
for my ear that has abandoned listening, 
for the utterance of the mouth which I  have spoken, yet my soul has not;
for sin I’ve committed  against my own body with the rod and no kindness, beating 													my breast;	                
for calling Yours my own; 
for having  sinned before You by anxiety and vain fear, 
for having fed the fire of doubt from the log of the tree of plenty;
for having been dilatory in growing; 
for having shut my door and having neither heard nor seen nor let happiness enter me
when beholding Your being. 

Translated from Hebrew by Fiona Sampson and the author