|
|
About
Contact Archive Donations Subscribe to Today's Situation | ||
 News from Israel
|
 Peace: Educational Resources
|
 Pleasure:Poetry and other Arts |
 Ariga's Amazon Bookstore
|
Home
Poetry || SubmissionsFour poems by Elisha PoratA HAUNTED POET to the memory of Abba Kovner translated from the Hebrew by Tsipi Keler Years he smoked, burned, inhaled filthy butts that wrecked his lungs with tuberculosis: muscus, cough and pain. He didn't cry he didn't shout, he only groaned in private, and in whispers dictated notes to those bending over his bed. The sound of chimes and bells interrupted the silence of his last nights always alerting his heart's flight: He didn't save from the fires a loving mother chasing after him, clinging as he walks, as if he were a baby again, holding her ashes on his last day. THE LOST SON translated from Hebrew by Asher Harris He came back, but he came like a stranger. He came back, looked about and did not Recall, for to him, all appeared estranged: The house, the yard, the narrow lane. Their memory sliced through his heart, Cut, and he who survived and was favoured Came back; and he who had sworn back there That nothing would be forget, estranged though it be: A dirt path, and the barren field and the ditch At the edge, and the lemon tree with its bitter fruit. He felt that his absence was almost ordained: To come back at last, to come like a stranger With a shadowy memory that was not estranged, And an unravelled thread of burning desire That will never more be made whole. STRANGE SNOW translated from the Hebrew by Riva Rubin Strange soft snow descends on the slopes of Jebel-El-Kebir, chill and silent it falls on dogouts and vehicles armored on the screens of memory. Astray in me in the damp haze forgotten comrades call whose lives once touched my life now grown distant beyond the roads the roadblocks the rolling hardare. Once, among them, I saw such a pure white suddenly crushed; minced and ploughed under and rearing up and then subsiding silently absorbing rent veins an reddening stain. THREE COLORS translated from the Hebrew by Seymour Mayne On Memorial Day I make my way up to the small military cemetery. In the northwestern corner we've placed a grey basalt rock and facing the southern corner -- a blanching chunk of chalk. And between under the loose sand our red loam spreads itself all around. And when the loudspeaker booms out the memorial prayer I close my eyes and see those three colors descend before me and disappear into the encroaching shadow of the stones. Elisha Porat, a 1996 winner of Israel's Prime Minister's Prize for Literature, has published more than a dozen volumes of fiction and poetry, in Hebrew, since 1973. His works have appeared in translation in Israel, the United States, Canada and England. Mr. Porat was born in 1938 to a "pioneer" family in Petah Tikva, Israel. In the early 1930's his parents were among the founders of Kibbutz Ein Hahoresh, where Mr. porat was raised and still makes his home. Mr. Porat was drafted into Israeli Army in 1956, served in a frontline reconnaissance unit and fought the Six Day war in 1967, and the Yom Kippur War in 1973. A short story by him -- On the Road to Beirut is also posted at Ariga. As a lifelong member of his Kibbutz, Mr. Porat has worked as a farmer as well as a writer. Mr. Porat currently performs editorial duties for several literary journals. You can write to him at porat_el@einhahoresh.org.il More work by Elisha Porat at Ariga Today's Situation
Back to the top
If this page was useful, please consider making a donation or use Amazon links at Ariga to go to the biggest online store in the world and help keep Ariga going. Click over to the bookstore, check out Ariga's latest recommended book, or visit one of the subject areas that interest Ariga visitors: Yiddish || Middle East Affairs || Military Affairs || Religion || Hippotherapy (Horses and Feldenkrais) || Women's Issues || Pop Culture || Cooking || American Issues || Or click over to Amazon's Top 100 Best Sellers
|
Ariga Recommends:
|
