Poem
Dvora Amir
WHAT SINKS IN
Every photo in your album has women workers crowdedso close together their temples touch each other,
staring straight ahead, as the photographer wanted.
You in the corner, kneeling, sorting sugar beets,
as if refusing to take part in the proletarian pose.
The day I looked gently at your beautiful legs, I discovered teeth marks
on your calf. That’s how a child discovers by chance a scrap
of her parent’s torment. All the years you walked around this country –
a world foreign to me was driven into your legs, a forbidden garden,
as it were, a cruel landlord, watch dogs, a girl attacked.
And once in George Eliot Lane, close to the Sisters of Zion convent,
I was overwhelmed by fear they’d drag me in, put me in orphan’s clothes,
lock me in a cellar soaked in the odor of crucifixes, and from the folds
of a monk’s black robe, Satan’s dogs would bite me.
From: The Defiant Muse
Publisher: The Feminist Press, New York, 1999
Publisher: The Feminist Press, New York, 1999
WHAT SINKS IN
From: Be’ira itit (Slow Burning)
Publisher: Ha-kibbutz Ha-meuchad, Tel Aviv
Publisher: Ha-kibbutz Ha-meuchad, Tel Aviv
Poems
Poems of Dvora Amir
Close
WHAT SINKS IN
Every photo in your album has women workers crowdedso close together their temples touch each other,
staring straight ahead, as the photographer wanted.
You in the corner, kneeling, sorting sugar beets,
as if refusing to take part in the proletarian pose.
The day I looked gently at your beautiful legs, I discovered teeth marks
on your calf. That’s how a child discovers by chance a scrap
of her parent’s torment. All the years you walked around this country –
a world foreign to me was driven into your legs, a forbidden garden,
as it were, a cruel landlord, watch dogs, a girl attacked.
And once in George Eliot Lane, close to the Sisters of Zion convent,
I was overwhelmed by fear they’d drag me in, put me in orphan’s clothes,
lock me in a cellar soaked in the odor of crucifixes, and from the folds
of a monk’s black robe, Satan’s dogs would bite me.
From: The Defiant Muse
Publisher: 1999, The Feminist Press, New York
Publisher: 1999, The Feminist Press, New York
WHAT SINKS IN
Every photo in your album has women workers crowdedso close together their temples touch each other,
staring straight ahead, as the photographer wanted.
You in the corner, kneeling, sorting sugar beets,
as if refusing to take part in the proletarian pose.
The day I looked gently at your beautiful legs, I discovered teeth marks
on your calf. That’s how a child discovers by chance a scrap
of her parent’s torment. All the years you walked around this country –
a world foreign to me was driven into your legs, a forbidden garden,
as it were, a cruel landlord, watch dogs, a girl attacked.
And once in George Eliot Lane, close to the Sisters of Zion convent,
I was overwhelmed by fear they’d drag me in, put me in orphan’s clothes,
lock me in a cellar soaked in the odor of crucifixes, and from the folds
of a monk’s black robe, Satan’s dogs would bite me.
From: The Defiant Muse
Publisher: 1999, The Feminist Press, New York
Publisher: 1999, The Feminist Press, New York
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