Herzl Hakak Three poems
Till Anguish, Till Kinship
by Herzl Hakak
Translation Schulamith Chava Halevy
Women dream with open eyes
with nails extract love from
blind earth
There is a suppressed cry in the world, which ignites deserts
which shrouds thirsty eyelids with pain
wet and deaf
It is you, naked upon brown grass
green with beauty whispering
your flame spreads, conquers
worlds and climates
There is a door-to-door whisper in the world, yearning
without respite, sex aching with moisture
beloveds abandoned to sorrow
dreaming of identity, of kinship
When Everything was a Child
Poem by Herzl Hakak
Translated by Schulamith Chava Halevy
People wander in the streets. Try to rend
sleep. Mend life in their being. All ready
shirts laundered. Something in the vantage point
from which their life-story was written
starts to beat. Touches a line.
Perhaps I am with them.
Perhaps this is the story of a People.
When everything was a child, perhaps he had dreams
intended to fulfil, and parts to erase. When the mature
teller materialized, the mountain was smoking. It was hard to breathe
in the heat of the torches. The lengthy purification. I sought there
parts of me that threatened to disappear. Breaths from my
past. I wandered with them perhaps to hold,
as if seeking in them
another whole. Beyond the fragmentary. The incidental.
Now I come before them, before their libraries
The stars drained of their strength
in the world, bereft of heaven.
How did their skies turn into ice-water
their yearned-for fields to strangers?
The returning boy is looking for me now and I
Need and bleed. With them, stained. Their heart is no longer
turned to me
as they go.
There is a teller among them who binds pages into a book. In the bushes
A child prays to me. What kind of poetry do you wish?
My life is torn along the
seamline.
My Mother’s Magic
By Herzl Hakak
Translation by Schulamith C. Halevy
She has nothing but her life.
Seeds of light embedded between rows
Singular enchantment
Ours are lives she knew to shape
as if from flour. As though everything was ground
grain by grain
in the millstone
While all the women sat upon stone steps
toying with their fans
glancing in any direction
they beheld a reticent glow upon her forehead
My mother kneaded her life, and ours
never losing sight nor sorrow of the maiden field