Poem
Chaim Gouri
His Mother
It was years ago, at the end of Deborah’s Song,I heard the silence of Sisera’s chariot so long in coming,
I watch Sisera’s mother captured in the window,
a woman with a silver streak in her hair.
A spoil of multi-hued embroideries,
two for the throat of each despoiler.
This is what the maidens saw.
That very hour he lay in the tent as one asleep.
His hands quite empty.
On his chin traces of milk, butter, blood.
The silence was not broken by the horses and chariots.
The maidens, too, fell silent one by one.
My silence reached out to theirs.
After awhile sunset.
After awhile the afterglow is gone.
Forty years the land knew peace. Forty years
no horses galloped, no dead horsemen stared glassily.
But her death came soon after her son’s.
© Translation: 1996, Stanley Chyet
From: Words in my Lovesick Blood
Publisher: Wayne State University Press, , 1996
From: Words in my Lovesick Blood
Publisher: Wayne State University Press, , 1996
HIS MOTHER
© 1960, Chaim Gouri
From: Shoshanat Ruxot (Windrose)
Publisher: Ha-kibbutz Ha-meuchad,
From: Shoshanat Ruxot (Windrose)
Publisher: Ha-kibbutz Ha-meuchad,
Poems
Poems of Chaim Gouri
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His Mother
It was years ago, at the end of Deborah’s Song,I heard the silence of Sisera’s chariot so long in coming,
I watch Sisera’s mother captured in the window,
a woman with a silver streak in her hair.
A spoil of multi-hued embroideries,
two for the throat of each despoiler.
This is what the maidens saw.
That very hour he lay in the tent as one asleep.
His hands quite empty.
On his chin traces of milk, butter, blood.
The silence was not broken by the horses and chariots.
The maidens, too, fell silent one by one.
My silence reached out to theirs.
After awhile sunset.
After awhile the afterglow is gone.
Forty years the land knew peace. Forty years
no horses galloped, no dead horsemen stared glassily.
But her death came soon after her son’s.
© 1996, Stanley Chyet
From: Words in my Lovesick Blood
Publisher: 1996, Wayne State University Press,
From: Words in my Lovesick Blood
Publisher: 1996, Wayne State University Press,
His Mother
It was years ago, at the end of Deborah’s Song,I heard the silence of Sisera’s chariot so long in coming,
I watch Sisera’s mother captured in the window,
a woman with a silver streak in her hair.
A spoil of multi-hued embroideries,
two for the throat of each despoiler.
This is what the maidens saw.
That very hour he lay in the tent as one asleep.
His hands quite empty.
On his chin traces of milk, butter, blood.
The silence was not broken by the horses and chariots.
The maidens, too, fell silent one by one.
My silence reached out to theirs.
After awhile sunset.
After awhile the afterglow is gone.
Forty years the land knew peace. Forty years
no horses galloped, no dead horsemen stared glassily.
But her death came soon after her son’s.
© 1996, Stanley Chyet
From: Words in my Lovesick Blood
Publisher: 1996, Wayne State University Press,
From: Words in my Lovesick Blood
Publisher: 1996, Wayne State University Press,
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