ADDITIONAL HOURS

The Hour of Wasting Time
 
We walked the length of six parallel paths.  Each one led to another.  We believed that at the end of the sixth path a door awaited us, and behind this door a tray, four cups, and a bottle of some cold or tepid drink. Where the second path began, we discovered lines of a poem leading us nowhere.  So we stopped, bent down, and picked up a piece of gravel. We put it in our mouth and sucked on it with great delight.
 
The Hour of the Dead Poem
 
This poem is an epitaph
on a tombstone
and beneath it
this poem is buried.
 
The Hour of Complete Forgetting
 
The shirt is buried
in the closet.
It forgot the body.
It forgot the words binding its beauty.
It forgot the gnashing teeth,
tearing off the buttons.
It forgot the folly of the seed
that it absorbed.
It forgot every stain, every needle prick.
It forgot the hands that hounded it,
caressed it, warped its form,
and buried it.
It forgot everything, and yet
one can wear it again and again
like memory itself.
 
The Hour of the Voices
 
I won’t go to Paris.
I’ll stay at home.
I’ll take off my underwear
and lie on my stomach.
I’ll lie down and listen
to the din of Ramat Gan
the groans of Givatayim
the barking of Tel Aviv
the weeping of Beer Sheva
that has no purpose.
I won’t go to Paris.

ADDITIONAL HOURS