Gedicht
Lyor Shternberg
THE PAGE IS A LANDSCAPE
I place a few shrubs in the south, (closeto my chest). Further north on a random
white hill, a young woman from the past
sits and plucks petals
from a daisy she picked very near where
the pen touches now.
It’s not easy to contain all one sees. The eye-
fan trembles from strain
and sun. The greatest temptation
is to abandon everything and slide into silence
like a dune, toward oblivion
and I would have unless I had known
the page would not disappear.
This is how we live. Dark
or discovered, by turns. You, me, the bastard
page, beloved, a reminder not to leave,
and the young woman too (grown, meanwhile,
and more beautiful) who has finished plucking flower petals
and floats gently now
between the lines –
her arms spread wide, hair
breathing in the blue afternoon light.
Don’t worry. She
stays.
© Translation: 2012, Lisa Katz
THE PAGE IS A LANDSCAPE
© 2004, Hakibbutz Hameuchad
From: The Page is a Landscape
Publisher: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, Tel Aviv
From: The Page is a Landscape
Publisher: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, Tel Aviv
Gedichten
Gedichten van Lyor Shternberg
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THE PAGE IS A LANDSCAPE
From: The Page is a Landscape
THE PAGE IS A LANDSCAPE
I place a few shrubs in the south, (closeto my chest). Further north on a random
white hill, a young woman from the past
sits and plucks petals
from a daisy she picked very near where
the pen touches now.
It’s not easy to contain all one sees. The eye-
fan trembles from strain
and sun. The greatest temptation
is to abandon everything and slide into silence
like a dune, toward oblivion
and I would have unless I had known
the page would not disappear.
This is how we live. Dark
or discovered, by turns. You, me, the bastard
page, beloved, a reminder not to leave,
and the young woman too (grown, meanwhile,
and more beautiful) who has finished plucking flower petals
and floats gently now
between the lines –
her arms spread wide, hair
breathing in the blue afternoon light.
Don’t worry. She
stays.
© 2012, Lisa Katz
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