Poem

Yair Hurwitz

Side by side

KINGDOM AND DREAM: IN THOSE DAYS

As the sun was setting 
in autumn ’47 we met 
at the intersection of 
Dizengoff and Bar Kochba Streets 
my father’s family from 
the Nordia slums 
my mother, my sister and me 
and we went up the hill 
to the square with the little fountain 
in front of the old municipality building. 

And those were the days of the British, 
days of expulsions. 

When the sun set 
at the municipal square 
the people became shadows 
calling out in hoarse voices 
the names of their loved ones. Two 
buses from those times 
discharged the expellees. Names 
of people without owners sawed 
the empty air. And suddenly 
for a few great joy 
for many heavy silence, 

It happened again and again. 
I was six and a half 
in the days of the setting sun.

KINGDOM AND DREAM: IN THOSE DAYS

Yair Hurwitz

(Mandatory Palestine, 1941 - 1988)

Yair Hurwitz was born in Tel Aviv in 1941. He died in 1988 at the tragically early age of 47, of the heart disease that had plagued him from childhood, while lying in a Belgian hospital waiting for a heart transplant. Hurwitz’s whole life, in fact was shadowed by tragedy: his mother’s entire family was murdered in the Holocaust; his father died when the poet was only eight years old. With a per...

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Poems of Yair Hurwitz

KINGDOM AND DREAM: IN THOSE DAYS

As the sun was setting 
in autumn ’47 we met 
at the intersection of 
Dizengoff and Bar Kochba Streets 
my father’s family from 
the Nordia slums 
my mother, my sister and me 
and we went up the hill 
to the square with the little fountain 
in front of the old municipality building. 

And those were the days of the British, 
days of expulsions. 

When the sun set 
at the municipal square 
the people became shadows 
calling out in hoarse voices 
the names of their loved ones. Two 
buses from those times 
discharged the expellees. Names 
of people without owners sawed 
the empty air. And suddenly 
for a few great joy 
for many heavy silence, 

It happened again and again. 
I was six and a half 
in the days of the setting sun.

KINGDOM AND DREAM: IN THOSE DAYS

As the sun was setting 
in autumn ’47 we met 
at the intersection of 
Dizengoff and Bar Kochba Streets 
my father’s family from 
the Nordia slums 
my mother, my sister and me 
and we went up the hill 
to the square with the little fountain 
in front of the old municipality building. 

And those were the days of the British, 
days of expulsions. 

When the sun set 
at the municipal square 
the people became shadows 
calling out in hoarse voices 
the names of their loved ones. Two 
buses from those times 
discharged the expellees. Names 
of people without owners sawed 
the empty air. And suddenly 
for a few great joy 
for many heavy silence, 

It happened again and again. 
I was six and a half 
in the days of the setting sun.