Yair Hurwitz
CAGED BIRD
1
I haven’t lost a thing here and still
these twilight hours in the month of Iyar are a time of contentment.
I am sitting in the garden of a café
and a bird, no doubt looking for a crumb, hops
onto a wooden table beside me.
Whatever is lost is lost and we won’t find it
and yet for a minute I seem to hear
my name fluttering - Ya’ir. Ya’ir.
In this twilight hour it didn’t seek me out
and yet, when it flew up and vanished
it left behind a pale line of air
between wing and sky blue.
Something in me said:
oh you are the stone bird.
Blessed be the time of contentment.
2
You were a bird on the window sill
and while, it seemed, you were only gazing out
you wove a trajectory of flashes of light
as if you wanted to enlarge the dimensions of the room.
I know the events which brought you to my window,
but your wings which regularly shift in the wind
are not clear to me, not even in the clear air.
From the stains on the wall, hung pictures,
the shelves, the books – I saw you
give life to words, life to the lines and colours of the painting,
trying to change their effects.
Now you sit, like a shameful habit, on the window sill
and I don’t see you again.
The dullness of the eyes seems a mirror
for the known and the unknown
its wings downcast.
4
The story of the body is like the story of a house.
You wander in the emptiness of walls
a bird in captivity,
study the openings to light.
A leak or stoppage in a pipe,
like a flaw in blood vessels, or blocked arteries,
constricts your horizons.
And so you sit on the balcony rails
feel the wind
which, sooner or later,
you will belong to and will not feel.
5
After Petrarch
If not I, with what will the body feel?
If it is I, why is suffering the decree?
If good is demanded, why will it not be sweet as nectar?
If evil, clarify the sin to me.
6
Unbinding your movements again you excite me.
You with your birdlike traits
And I nursed on stone.
Not satisfied to move from bookshelf to window-sill,
you do not show restraint.
You lift hopes.
The journeys we planned, the varied voyages
return to us in a mist, do not fit
a bird\'s song and a worn-out body.
CAGED BIRD
From: Tsipur Cluah
Publisher: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, Tel Aviv
CAGED BIRD
1
I haven’t lost a thing here and still
these twilight hours in the month of Iyar are a time of contentment.
I am sitting in the garden of a café
and a bird, no doubt looking for a crumb, hops
onto a wooden table beside me.
Whatever is lost is lost and we won’t find it
and yet for a minute I seem to hear
my name fluttering - Ya’ir. Ya’ir.
In this twilight hour it didn’t seek me out
and yet, when it flew up and vanished
it left behind a pale line of air
between wing and sky blue.
Something in me said:
oh you are the stone bird.
Blessed be the time of contentment.
2
You were a bird on the window sill
and while, it seemed, you were only gazing out
you wove a trajectory of flashes of light
as if you wanted to enlarge the dimensions of the room.
I know the events which brought you to my window,
but your wings which regularly shift in the wind
are not clear to me, not even in the clear air.
From the stains on the wall, hung pictures,
the shelves, the books – I saw you
give life to words, life to the lines and colours of the painting,
trying to change their effects.
Now you sit, like a shameful habit, on the window sill
and I don’t see you again.
The dullness of the eyes seems a mirror
for the known and the unknown
its wings downcast.
4
The story of the body is like the story of a house.
You wander in the emptiness of walls
a bird in captivity,
study the openings to light.
A leak or stoppage in a pipe,
like a flaw in blood vessels, or blocked arteries,
constricts your horizons.
And so you sit on the balcony rails
feel the wind
which, sooner or later,
you will belong to and will not feel.
5
After Petrarch
If not I, with what will the body feel?
If it is I, why is suffering the decree?
If good is demanded, why will it not be sweet as nectar?
If evil, clarify the sin to me.
6
Unbinding your movements again you excite me.
You with your birdlike traits
And I nursed on stone.
Not satisfied to move from bookshelf to window-sill,
you do not show restraint.
You lift hopes.
The journeys we planned, the varied voyages
return to us in a mist, do not fit
a bird\'s song and a worn-out body.
From: Tsipur Cluah
CAGED BIRD
1
I haven’t lost a thing here and still
these twilight hours in the month of Iyar are a time of contentment.
I am sitting in the garden of a café
and a bird, no doubt looking for a crumb, hops
onto a wooden table beside me.
Whatever is lost is lost and we won’t find it
and yet for a minute I seem to hear
my name fluttering - Ya’ir. Ya’ir.
In this twilight hour it didn’t seek me out
and yet, when it flew up and vanished
it left behind a pale line of air
between wing and sky blue.
Something in me said:
oh you are the stone bird.
Blessed be the time of contentment.
2
You were a bird on the window sill
and while, it seemed, you were only gazing out
you wove a trajectory of flashes of light
as if you wanted to enlarge the dimensions of the room.
I know the events which brought you to my window,
but your wings which regularly shift in the wind
are not clear to me, not even in the clear air.
From the stains on the wall, hung pictures,
the shelves, the books – I saw you
give life to words, life to the lines and colours of the painting,
trying to change their effects.
Now you sit, like a shameful habit, on the window sill
and I don’t see you again.
The dullness of the eyes seems a mirror
for the known and the unknown
its wings downcast.
4
The story of the body is like the story of a house.
You wander in the emptiness of walls
a bird in captivity,
study the openings to light.
A leak or stoppage in a pipe,
like a flaw in blood vessels, or blocked arteries,
constricts your horizons.
And so you sit on the balcony rails
feel the wind
which, sooner or later,
you will belong to and will not feel.
5
After Petrarch
If not I, with what will the body feel?
If it is I, why is suffering the decree?
If good is demanded, why will it not be sweet as nectar?
If evil, clarify the sin to me.
6
Unbinding your movements again you excite me.
You with your birdlike traits
And I nursed on stone.
Not satisfied to move from bookshelf to window-sill,
you do not show restraint.
You lift hopes.
The journeys we planned, the varied voyages
return to us in a mist, do not fit
a bird\'s song and a worn-out body.
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