They told me it was metal,
but I didn't believe a word.
But now I find it's iron
of the strongest, finest kind.
Ah! Here is my little bellows,
I think I'll melt it down.

I was sick of being a woman,
sick of the pain,
the irrelevant detail of ***,
my own concavity
uselessly hungering
and emptier whenever it was filled,
and filled finally
by its own emptiness,
seeking the garden of solitude
instead of men.

The white bed
in the green garden--
I looked forward
to sleeping alone
the way some long
for a lover.

Even when you arrived,
I tried to beat you
away with my sadness,
my cynical seductions,
and my trick of
turning a slave
into a master.

And all because
you made
my fingertips ache
and my eyes cross
in passion
that did not know its own name.

Bear, beast, lover
of the book of my body,
you turned my pages
and discovered
what was there
to be written
on the other side.

And now
I am blank
for you,
a tabula rasa
ready to be printed
with letters
in an undiscovered language
by the great press
of our love.

she's six-foot, two inches tall
and blonde in a see-through-gloves kinda way
she's oddly shaped - okay, she's THIN
but she's really oddly shaped and don't argue
a french accent - I think it's mostly put-on, I mean
she's been here what, 5 years now                 but

he's always petting me when she's around
as if to sympathize, "so she's incredible, don't feel bad"
and I swore yesterday he gave me  the
"i'm not attracted to her" look

The thing isn't that she's french, and blonde, and thin
and the thing isn't that he sees it
The thing is that I haven't been accessible lately
(pretending to be asleep
not paying attention, really)

The thing isn't that I forgot how to fix what's broken
or that I don't know HOW
The thing that really bothers me is
I don't even think I want to try

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet,

And whither then? I cannot say.

Take the knapsacks
and the utensils and washtubs
and the books of the Koran
and the army fatigues
and the tall tales and the torn soul
and whatever's left, bread or meat,
and kids running around like chickens in the village.
How many children do you have?
How many children did you have?
It's hard to keep tabs on kids in a situation like this.
Not like in the old country
in the shade of the mosque and the fig tree,
when the children the children would be shooed outside by day
and put to bed at night.
Put whatever isn't fragile into sacks,
clothes and blankets and bedding and diapers
and something for a souvenir
like a shiny artillery shell perhaps,
or some kind of useful tool,
and the babies with rheumy eyes
and the R.P.G. kids.
We want to see you in the water, sailing aimlessly
with no harbor and no shore.
You won't be accepted anywhere
You are banished human beings.
You are people who don't count
You are people who aren't needed
You are a pinch of lice
stinging and itching
to madness.


Translated from the original Hebrew by Karen Alkalay-Gut.

Shut not so soon; the dull-eyed night
Has not as yet begun
To make a seizure on the light,
Or to seal up the sun.

No marigolds yet closed are;
No shadows great appear;
Nor doth the early shepherds’ star
Shine like a spangle here.

Stay but till my Julia close
Her life-begetting eye,
And let the whole world then dispose
Itself to live or die.

Grey dress, moonlighting
You’re perched again on the rocks, balanced on the seam between the sidewalk and the street
You always burnt softly in the daylight
Your face is lit up like a distant star
Like years ago
Like humming breaths, sober and deep, that I fought to keep in
Like bodies pressed into rock
Like stories escaping your lips
We begged, but the endings never came

They thought you were the veins in the granite
The current in the lake
The light in the trees
All the things you’d curse when drunk
I knew you as the Goddess of Twilight
A profound emptiness at your disposal
To me, you were an eternity in longing
Lost in dark rooms and vacant houses
Sometimes you were an exercise in blindness
Other times, a chant
Thin and narrow
Just blood on the concrete
But most often you were the living one
The beating heart
We would count your lives on our fingers
You’d had fourteen and a half
In thirteen short years

Tonight you’re silent
Somewhere else
The day’s distant, far-off
Promising to drown you
Fiery asphalt informs you
That it should feel all too familiar
Yes, but this time you’re not here
Lingering halfway between going and gone
You’ve written your name on your cheek
For fear of forgetting
Heard a ten-year-old reciting fragments of stories the other day
Stories of a girl lost in dark rooms and vacant houses
A Goddess of Twilight
Blood on concrete
Stories of a girl with fourteen and a half lives
Stories with no ending

Oh, heaven always comes right when you’re leaving.
Sometimes you wonder why you bother to stay at all.

I had my eyes closed and my arms outstretched
to a vision of her in the dark.
She was gone by the time I reached her.
There is a note that plays on an old slide guitar every time she leaves me
and when I am alone after that I think first of her hair,
second of her hands,
third of her quiet breath on my back in the middle of the night.
With a soft brush I stroked a steady line of light onto a black canvas and it was her.
During the small moment when she opens the front door and I first look at her face,
I am aware of something of profound importance
but right now I'm not sure what it is.
I want to breathe a strong gust of peace into her so she feels it low in her chest
and I want to watch her eyes open to a world that's simple,
that loves her.
There is such a thing as torment
And yet there is such as thing as her arms around me,
her hands on my back, and
I wonder if she knows that when she kissed me I felt a new meaning to the word
Home.
I didn't know it was possible for her to look at me that way, so
I want to call her Sweetheart
because her heart is a sweet place
where I found something that was mine before I had to ask for it.

Let me know when it's alright for me to love you
Because the next time I see you, baby I'm going to take you
Home.