Gedicht
Dvora Amir
GEOGRAPHY LESSON
What creates poetry, you askand I, like the coal man in the Basque movie,
run to brace the tumbling stack of coal.
We’re talking about a lifesaving act, I say,
the courage to touch the heat collapsing.
“Beyond all this,” as Larkin wrote,
“the wish to be alone.”
This grinding land rests on my neck.
The knife, the dagger, and the spear
have been contaminated since the day people thought to produce them.
We walk about like those who have lost their minds,
drumming our exposed chests in crazy ceremonies.
The poems, I promise you, haven’t experimented on animals.
Everything is done carefully and strictly, created humanely,
after all, we’re talking about human beings.
The head of a Palestinian woman bandaged in white cotton lies on a platter
like the head of the Baptist presented to Salome.
In the land of vengeance dripping mother’s milk and blood
poems are moveable property –
stones, ridges, houses, fences.
© Translation: 2004, Lisa Katz
“The knife, the dagger, and the spear/ have been contaminated . . .”:
Here the poem challenges a line of rabbinical text which defines the purity or impurity of metal tools.
GEOGRAPHY LESSON
From: Shirim doqumentariyim (Documentary Poems)
Publisher: Ha-kibbutz Ha-meuchad, Tel Aviv
Publisher: Ha-kibbutz Ha-meuchad, Tel Aviv
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GEOGRAPHY LESSON
From: Shirim doqumentariyim (Documentary Poems)
GEOGRAPHY LESSON
What creates poetry, you askand I, like the coal man in the Basque movie,
run to brace the tumbling stack of coal.
We’re talking about a lifesaving act, I say,
the courage to touch the heat collapsing.
“Beyond all this,” as Larkin wrote,
“the wish to be alone.”
This grinding land rests on my neck.
The knife, the dagger, and the spear
have been contaminated since the day people thought to produce them.
We walk about like those who have lost their minds,
drumming our exposed chests in crazy ceremonies.
The poems, I promise you, haven’t experimented on animals.
Everything is done carefully and strictly, created humanely,
after all, we’re talking about human beings.
The head of a Palestinian woman bandaged in white cotton lies on a platter
like the head of the Baptist presented to Salome.
In the land of vengeance dripping mother’s milk and blood
poems are moveable property –
stones, ridges, houses, fences.
© 2004, Lisa Katz
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