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There are many riddles in life,
Mounds and mounds of answers too;
The wise men have many solutions,
The morons have a desire for life.
Once a wise man told me:
“There is one essence of being,
Only…
There once lived a little shepherd.
One time he fell asleep in the vale.
The shepherd woke: woe to me!
The sheep were not in the vale.
Woe is me,
Woe and oh
Without my sheep
Where should I go.
The little sons of Abraham took shells
And floated boats made out of mother-pearl;
Then Isaac leaned in fear on Ishmael.
And mournfully sang the two black swans
Quite gloomy notes…
[ . . . ] I have striven to transmit exactly the course of thought, the spirit, and the expressions of the [original] text; thus, you have before you not a “reworking” but a true translation.I have…
For Zishe Landau
Quiet, quiet, no loud talk!
Stand bent over, pale and dark,
Crouched up in a ball of pain,
Shut up—holding your breath in.
Out of the deep night
He’ll ride up on a white horse
Hear…
Deep in the woods stands my tent,
No one will discover me,
Late at night and at first dawn,
I hear the revel of the spring
From the deep roots underneath,
To the moss-covered trunks,
From…
Between the River Prat and stream Hidekel
on a mountaintop there waves a palm.
And in the palm, among its fronds
lives a hummingbird of gold.
Golden bird! Fly and wheel
go out and find for me my…
The cheeks collapsed and the eyes half-shut,
My mother listens as her knees sigh:
The whole morning under the winter sky
She ran about to every market.
So let us now at the gate of the wall
Sleep…
Jew, you’ve yelled at him, seething with rage.
Jew, you’ve yelled at him, seeking to shame him.
Jew, no better word can you find to defame him.
Jew, no better word to vent your disdain.
For him it…
Arab Halva—moist, sticky, fibrous. The taste tears across my lips like a memory. Within me Jaffa stirs, wakens from sleep; eyes and faces of Jaffa.
I am there, it is afternoon, a city half-awake…