poems by Nurit Zarcha

[davidfcooper.livejournal.com]

THE FIG


That very morning after the guests said,
“Your branches are as splendid as paradise,” the order was given: Cut them off!
Now my clenched fists fall to earth,
their anger evaporating in the sun.

I should have contracted inside myself.
A war is taking place in the yard. Bitter as wolves,
man and tree mark off their sovereign borders.

I see through his eyes: shadows of drops on the path,
a thicket advancing toward him.
But how to stop?

A garden, darkness-filled mouth,
its eyes lids blinking,
its lust-spotted stamens drawn out,
setting fire to the ice of the jasmine.

Did he invade in order to heal,
to illuminate me to the edge of my darkness?
Now how will I fight on behalf of the garden?
I wrap myself in the shadow of my broken ribs.



© Translation: Lisa Katz

IN THE MORNING THE TOOTHBRUSHES STARE AT ME


In the morning the toothbrushes stare at me,
like children waking up in a strange house.
The skin of the flung clothes, like fowl emptied of flight.

No civilization ever fought this way with death,
raising every detail to the level of a public event.
The heel of air you left in the gaping shoe – the face’s relief in the pillow.

Eternal life doesn’t begin at birth,
it’s the result of yielding to difficult rules.
Even if the sun is but a reflection through day and night.
And don’t ring him up at his home.

To the sound of the heart’s shell asking for a little sleep,
the house approaches the kitchen, to be consoled by the glass you left on the table,
Undenied vestige of “Once upon a time.”

What did the bed say compiling the thrills of love,
why the whispering? Come and hold me
for I’m a statue of air.



© Translation: Gabriel Levin

HUSBANDS


They present me with a bill
because I wasn’t happy,
and always amaze me with their vocabulary.

They request a receipt for my fate
and encourage me to think
that because of my cat
we live in the wrong place.

In a time of national struggles
they refer me to my mother
as if the fact that I’m a mother is a fiction.

A few of them serve cake
that I bake, and want thanks for the invention of electricity,
winter, and jam. That I don’t like jam
doesn’t matter, because anyway they are editing my memoirs.

Secretly in their hearts they think I own stocks
which I’m not likely to share
and when I arrive to distribute my borrowed gifts
they are always too tired or concerned with proportions.

The word “narcissism” they pronounce with closed eyes
as though sucking on a water pipe,
muttering at me with disgust
as if they were slamming a window on a draft or a bug.
When I stopped being afraid
I saw they had targeted my need for air.

When they leave, they forsake the emptiness of their cups,
and in return tend to take my dictionary with them,
disappearing into their lives like the land into the Dutch sea,
without leaving me any language in which to stir my pain.





© Translation: 2003, Lisa Katz