The Killers of the Fields

Nathan Alterman

1936

In ascetic silence, in stony skirts,
God’s handmaid falls on her face—
Flash of an empty night, a forlorn desert waste,
Shards of sunset upon the rocks.
This land. Trodden, just like this, by a wandering sadness,
Trailing in her thunders, calling her: “Where art thou?”
Speak to her, tell her of things that are other,
Tell her of fields that are learning…
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Creator Bio

Nathan Alterman

1910–1970

The Hebrew poet Nathan Alterman was born in Warsaw and moved to Tel Aviv with his parents when he was fifteen, continuing his education at the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium. At the age of nineteen, he began studying at the Sorbonne in Paris but the following year decided to switch to agronomy and moved to Nancy, France. In 1932, he returned to Tel Aviv and began working at the Mikveh Yisrael agricultural school. He soon decided to earn a living in journalism while also devoting himself to poetry. He wrote both lyrical and political poetry. During the last years of the Mandate, the nationalist political verse that he published in his newspaper column, at first in Haaretz and then in Davar, attracted a wide readership and was at times censored by the British. He also wrote children’s books and plays and translated Shakespeare, Racine, and Molière into Hebrew.

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