In response to the question: when did you first feel the power of poetry?

After all the whispers despaired of eliciting from her the word "Yes",
I recited the "Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias”.
She held my neck with the same hand that wiped a tear,
and leaned her head as close as she could.
Oh Lorca, I said to myself, it isn’t right, but without the lime of
words you spilled on the matador’s blood stains,
I would not be holding at five in the afternoon
this girl whose army uniform
was more wrinkled then the cliffs of the Zin River.

We called those cliffs the flamenco footprints of the desert.
The last horns of daylight burst from the head of the yellow bull,
and we were just another line in the moment that suited the
darkness.

Translation: Karen Alkalay-Gut

Pomegranate or the Biography of the Knob of Desire

I imagine the angel in charge of design
passing in Eden near the pomegranate
tree and knowing immediately
this is the knob shape God will want
to attach to the door of desire of the woman.
The angel in charge of names will call it a breast.

Translation: Karen Alkalay-Gut

A Letter to Elvis Presley

I was almost Roberto who sold shawarma in the main strip of town, which the
sons of bitches from the Kibbutz said was
The armpit of the valley.
In the deli next door, Violet sold cheese, and when we fell in love, I waited
Six hours before tasting her.
From these tastes came
Priscilla.
Violet tried to tell me that such a name will be made fun of. I told her
There's nobody in the neighborhood who doesn't remember how I got 21 days in
the slammer
At Prison Six after I dumped a tray on the head of the officer who turned up the
cassette volume to the voice
Of Cliff Richard.
I reminded her that I drew you swaying with the microphone
On the wall of the mess hall in Beit Nabala , and that our favorite song
Was "Love me Tender," until one of the reservists, who came to speak,
Told me that tender in English is not what I think:
It's a love song to a girl, not a Ford D-200.
On that day I changed that love to "Jailhouse Rock"
And a week later, I sang it in shoes without laces.
Violet knew it was useless to convince her man that instead of
An engagement ring he bought her a gold-plated guitar hanging
On a chain.
None of us ever answered the question 'Why did you divorce?'
Priscilla said in kindergarten she had a home with mama, a room with papa
Who moved to live in grandma's home, and that her best friend is
Joy the Accordionist who came every Tuesday from the Kibbutz.
One Tuesday, when I pleaded they hold the child in kindergarten
Another 15 minutes because there was pressure at work and the waitress was sick,
Joy offered to bring her over to the restaurant.
I nearly broke legs of her table because of too many mezes.
At the end, when she said thanks, I felt once again I saved
Face, in honor of which I'd spend your singing on "One night with you."
The second time I saw her, Priscilla was already asleep.
I felt funny when I started holding an accordion case.
I felt afraid someone would think I'm like the new immigrant who takes
The accordion to play in the square next to Haifa Cinema.
I felt irritated that the Jeweler looked at me like I was a madman
When I asked him to make me a gold-plated accordion that hangs
On a chain.
Only one thing Joy asked of me before I'd meet her parents.

"When my father," she said, "tells you: 'Remind me when you served in the army,'
Skip the Beit Nabala and the slammer because of Elvis. Tell him
You were the first from your town to make it to the commando."
Of course, I didn't listen to her.
We, Mr. Elvis, were
Soldiers in your army,
We were the laces in rock-n-roll shoes,
We used to stuff your voice as if it was gunpowder into tracer bullets
Which we shot into
No-
Where.

Translation: Robert Manaster & Hana Inbar

1. For a strict observance of Jewish Kosher laws, one would have to wait 6 hours after eating meat before one can eat cheese.

2. Bet Nabala is the colloquial name for the largest military transportation-support facility in Israel. The people who work there are mainly either drivers or mechanics.

3. In Hebrew, the word "Tender" (טנדר) is pronounced as such and means pickup truck.

Variations on Cain

1.
The fallen leaves are applause
God created for Cain's wanderings.
"I'm Abel," he called to them
Every few steps,
"And we are babble," answered the leaves
And pointed to blood-lips on the face of the tree
That spat them.

2.
Cain was born on the day
The word murder
      Wanted
To enter the dictionary.
A serpent taught him to roll his tongue. Ostriches buried
His forehead in earth. A lot of geography rolled
Under his feet, and the owls of algebra knew
For every Cain
There's an exception to Cain.

3.
After devouring the last sheep
From his brother's herd
Cain learned
Free cheese
      One only finds
In mousetraps.

4.
Above all, Cain looked like an accordion door
In an abandoned elevator.
His skin retracted and stretched.

From floor to floor, his eyes were shifting
And rust clung to the silence of the alarm button that was
Never tried.
"When I'm the lightening," he thought, "I'll tell thunder
To leave his voice on the ground floor."

5.
In one of the road's caves, Cain hid
The notes of "The Requiem" that Mozart will write,
The golden hair clip that will pamper Nefertiti, Queen of Egypt,
The moving lips of a barren woman
And the saddles of the horses that will gallop alongside the End of Days.

6.
In one thing Cain was right: the world, like his wanderings, is a prosthetic leg
That grows instead of the amputated leg
From the body of the lie.

Translation: Robert Manaster & Hana Inbar

Pointe Shoes

From the moment ballet lights up in you
Pink ribbons thread up
Your ankles.
And you
Erect
A body
Like a boom lift
At the end of which stands the one who changes
Burnt-out bulbs in the belly
Of street lamps.
Beneath the cast-off light
I water with a glance
The flowers of electricity that sprout
From the tar-face of
Asphalt.

Translation: Robert Manaster & Hana Inbar

Punk Poem beginning with two Lines by Chechov

A pistol appearing in the first act
must be fired in the third. The barrel
will spit out jacket buckles, iron chains
and the stiletto steps of the women who will slice
Yehuda Halevy Road to smithereens. In the meantime
she dyes the hair at her nape red
like a Bedouin marking sheep.
Who knows, maybe a shepherd’s
flute is the fringe of her dream.

Translation: Barbara Goldberg and Moshe Dor

Venjança d'un nen que quequejava

Avui parlo en memòria de les paraules que un cop
se m’encallaven a la boca,
en memòria de les dents amb rodes que esmicolaven síl·labes
sota la llengua amb l’olor de pols cremada
entre les barres i els llavis enfosquits.
Somniava aleshores desfer-me de les paraules empaquetades
com mercaderies robades i emmagatzemades a la boca,
estripar els embalatges de cartró i destapar
les joguines de l’alfabet.
La mestra em posava la mà a l’espatlla i em consolava dient-me
que també Moisès quequejava i tot i això havia arribat al Sinaí.
El meu Sinaí era la nena que seia al meu costat
a classe, i jo no tenia foc a l’esbarzer de la boca
per encendre, al seu davant,
les paraules que havien cremat d’amor per ella.

Blues for the life that was almost mine

I was born in Virginia. From my adoptive father, a judge whose verdicts
were blackened by bribery, I learned to chew tobacco leaves and to reach the spot
where girls’ spines end.
One night I stole the Chevrolet keys and I drove her
to Atlanta. I lived in the car and at nights, on the back seat springs,
I folded the cloths to pillow size. Once, when they caught
me urinating near the wheels and fined me 50 dollars,
I told the judge that the sky is the ceiling and the back bumper is the toilet.
One day my legitimate father showed up at the restaurant where I worked. He
looked at me,
and I sewed eyes in a magical needle that I always kept
in the pocket of my longing,
if this story were not real, it could have been planted
in a Johnny Cash song, but I, who brushed my teeth
five times a day to remove the tobaccos stains, vomit all
the Johnnys Cashs into the same bowl in which I vomit Virginia.
“Where will the bomb fall” sings Roger Waters in the tape cassette player
and I begin to understand that one cannot erase the Tommy gun from one’s
memory
that my adoptive father kept in the drawer.
No cloud has blackened
or fallen
in this poem. I was then
the philosopher of pouring the coffee
moment at a motel
where the blonde waitress wants
to drown with you in a pile of sugar.
Why do you wear a bra, I once asked someone like this,
and she said that her breasts, like my life, are a fist
which is better off concealed in a glove.

P.S. Blues About the Real Life

I was not born in Virginia. My father was a lock of silence on
his lips’ doors,
ever since his death I follow him in the back seats
of bus #61.
The memory halts at stops, opens a door,
rings the bell and sways when there is no room to sit.
Under its wheels beats an asphalt heart
and I on the sidewalks’ back
continue to whip my heels as a rod.

Translation: Hanni Dimitstein

A love poem for the Mederano Circus Acrobat

It was hot,
And she laid her leg on a stool
to remind how much I wanted to be
The bandage that was wrapped around her knee
Or even in more desperate times
The hidden blue bruise.
Back then I was in the complex gap between 15 to 16
And she stretched ropes around my body without saying,
Come on, touch my Italianisms,
Come and despise, as I, the fires' hoops
Or come and say that you would have praised my legs
In a display window of any museum for History of Desire.

Back then I was strong in dreams, and in the mornings that
I came to the Circus Tent I saw her brother brushing
A horses' mane, her mother reading a Magazine
Which on its cover flashed joy in the corner of the eye
Of Sofia Loren
And I, in my heart, applauding
the second she waved back
to the wave that I never dared to send her.

Till now I haven't got a clue what was her name.

Translation: Liora and Shirly Someck

The Temperature is gunpowder

The courting gesture should snuggle like a pet,
talking is like shooting from the hip
and the years walking away from 16 and a half
are like kittens
at the edge of the hand.

Finally, even the best gunslinger is a gunslinger.
The hidden face comes to light by the swish of a sword
and the burning city
is reflected
in the glass of every storefront.

I know this neighborhood,
the temperature is gunpowder
and sometimes even silence
is the trajectory of the first word.

Translation: Barbara Goldberg with Moshe Dor

Another Winter

On the nearby river boats painted pink sail on another
errand, the man renting boats goes through another winter
with rolled-up sleeves and he can always ask, “What about
your Dutch, has she come back?”

Translation: Barbara Goldberg with Moshe Dor

Snapshot

So what if I come from the place where Paradise once flowed?
My father never spoke of the Euphrates, nor the Tigris, nor the muscles
rippling down his swimmers’ arms, but I saw in photos the everlasting
mountains and the gladiolas planted as courtyard mementos
by British officers. When I was three, in the dunes of BatYam, the world turned
white
with laundry, flapping in the hands
of hard-working women.
Ben Gurion gave speeches at each election
and on the billboard in front of the cinema, girls
surrounded Maurice Chevalier in his white Panama hat.
Maybe that’s why I loved Marilyn Monroe when I touched
an American girl working her second summer at the Green Village.
I stuttered in English in front of the horses stabled at Ramat Hasharon and the gold
chain
she already wore on the streets of New York.
From shards of words guilt was admitted and recorded,
from shards of words Sh.’s legs were created
and the short skirts hanging in King Solomon Street like billboards
on the butchershop of the body.

Translation: Barbara Goldberg with Moshe Dor

This is the Poem about the Girl who asked me to write a Poem about her

She leaned the mop against the door to the toilets
at the Jaffa branch of the Savings and Loan and wrung it out
with water-logged fingers.
I knew the back of her neck, the bend of her body, the family honor
multiplying buttons on her blouse.
I knew she came from Kalansawa and if there'll be a poem
I'll title it Fatma Morgana.
Years go by. In her dream a bird pecks
at the eye of a happy prince, I sew
on the bird wings
of the poem I promised
and when I meet the girl I'll make it fly over the head of Mohammed Ali
who was called a "dirty nigger" while strolling on the street
and when his friends egged him on
to strike back with a fist he replied,
"And if Arthur Rubinstein walked by
and somebody called him a 'dirty kike'-- would he
knock him out with a concert?"

Translation: Barbara Goldberg with Moshe Dor

The Ecological Poem

The eagles burst in with daybreak
Under the wings only shade was saved
And in the factory of nature
I'm just a slave.

Translation: Shirly Someck

Arabic Work

From which thread will be woven the demonstration banner
of Dir Hana’s textile workers.
In the scratch canals along the palms a drop of sweat rows
like a slaves boat towards the Bay of Scars in the fingernails.
I recall my mother’s first years in this country.
A new immigrant sits in the sewing machines room of “Rekem” factory.
Her brow is plowed like a bulb of yarn
the thimble is the war helmet and the needle sword pierces the fabric’s belly
out of which were sewn holiday cloths,
workers’ overalls
and the handkerchief of the tear.

Translation: Hanni Dimistein

Guillotine

or: In regards to a Young Poet

If one of these days you meet the Frenchman, the Englishman, and the German,
Who were all brought to the guillotine, remember!
The Frenchman asked they put him facing
Upward so he can look death in the eye;
The Englishman wanted to bury his gaze into the ground.
And with both of them the blade got stuck
An inch before their head sang
A farewell song to their body.
When they asked the German in what direction to put him,
He answered: "First of all, fix the guillotine."
And you,
Don't forget to stare straight into his eyes
And tell him, it's not worth fixing her who wanted
To behead your thoughts,
But you should let her dream about
The fireworks of the word blood,
Even if she decides to stop an inch before
This impolite encounter with
The nape or
Throat.
Remember!
The guillotine can be as small as clippers
You use to clip off fingernails
That in your love poems scratched
A page's neck.

Translation: Robert Manaster & Hana Inbar

Swan Lake

Make it so that the tear from the swan's cheek
Becomes a cornerstone
For the Ocean of Joy.
There
I shall learn to swim.

Translation: Robert Manaster & Hana Inbar

Ararat Express

For Benni Efrat

No one expected the horses to remember the Flood.
Time's nail had rusted in the horseshoe when God
Let the wet shout go into the world.
Since then warriors raced upon their backs,
Nations wandered
And the wind's whip snapped a gallop in their legs.
I therefore ask my friends in the donkeys' parliament
To hide pride's tail between hind legs
And offer our brothers, the horses, to be honor guard
On the day we lead messiah.
Only a saddle scorched by sun and scratched by wanderings
Will perhaps convince that rainbow over Ararat
To scribble the face of the clouds again.

Translation: Robert Manaster

Airports

It’s a pity we can’t say: I landed at Brigitte Bardot,
I saw a thong in the duty free at Marilyn Monroe
or in Rafah I bought eyeliner and mascara
at the airport named after Cleopatra.
Thus the clouds of the day would become scarves draped
on God’s shoulders and the night clouds before the landing
lace dresses at a banquet of
stars.
Instead we say “Charles de Gaulle,” “Kennedy”
or “Yasser Arafat”
and we see how the helicopter of politics
always flies in a low sky
as though it were a spark from the crown of a king
challenging the sun.

Translation: Vivian Eden

Sun Sonnet

It will not rain today
and the earth’s lips like a concubine’s lips
will not be moistened by a stolen kiss.
Today the sun will come to caress the feet of hills,
whisper at the tip of a stalk a lullaby
for sleeping groundsel
and flake rust off a command sign
on the wall of the military camp
where my daughter shines.
Today love will slide
like a banana down the world’s throat
and its peel discarded among the stars
will be patched above my head
like a personal moon.

Tractors

The sons of Doctor Mengele sell tractors
On the road between Munich and Stuttgart,
Whoever buys them will plow the land,
Water a tree,
Paint his roof tiles red,
And during Oktoberfest will watch the band
March in the square like tin soldiers in a shop window.

In the beauty salon of history, they know how to comb a forelock
Even in the hair
Of a monster.

Hear Ronny Someck read the poem in Hebrew > here

Kærlighedens offside

Kineserne fyldte den med hør,
egypterne med avner.
Romerne syede den af komaver,
og renæssancens lærde
stoppede den ud med hestehår
for at minde den om, at den skulle galopere.
Så vil du have bolden tilbage
på dit livs bane, skal du fylde den op igen
Med hår fra en kvinde, du har elsket,
heppe på hende
og aldrig nogensinde sparke til det,
der ruller under dine fø.

Love's offside

The Chinese filled it up with flax
The Egyptians with wheat chaff,
The Romans stitched it from ox's innards
And the scholars of the renaissance stuffed it with hair
Plucked from a horse, to remind it to gallop.
 Therefore, if you want to bring the ball back
 To the court of your life. You must fill it again
With the hair of woman you loved.
To root for her,
And never kick
What rolls
Under your feet

'Love's offside' was translated into Danish for the magazin Goldberg.
The poem is from Ronny Someck's book 'Algeria'.

A poem written by Ronny Someck from the book '7 Shurot al pele ha-Yarkon' (1987).

The track is from the cd 'Al Xurvot HaAviv' (2010) by Quetev Meriri with original artwork by Israeli artist Merav Shacham, which you also can see in the video.

Read the poem > here

Revenge of the Stuttering Child

I speak today in memory of the words which once stuck in my mouth
in memory of the toothy gears which crushed syllables
under my tongue and smelled the gunpowder
in the gap between the gullet and the arid lips.
My dream then was to smuggle the words packed like stolen goods
in the mouth’s warehouse,
to rip the cardboard boxes open and pull out the
toys of the alphabet.
The teacher would lay a hand on my shoulder and say that Moses, too,
stuttered but nonetheless made it to Mt. Sinai.
My mountain was a girl who sat
next to me in class, and I had no fire in the bush of my mouth
to ignite, before her very eyes,
the words consumed by my love of her.

Translation: Vivian Eden