translated from the Hebrew by Mildred Faintly
from Brought Low
He came by night, the spectral emissary,
he sat on the edge of my hospital bed:
his bones jutting up, tenting the fleshless
skin stretched over his skeleton,
his eyes were distant glimmers
in the depths of their wells.
It was then I understood just how rickety
was that old bridge pitched
by the hands of time,
the one we cross from yesterday
to tomorrow, across the vast of night.
He brandished his withered skinny fist,
I heard him say with evil glee,
“That poem you’re scribbling down tonight
will be the last you’ll ever write.”
The Pear Tree
It was all a plot, and Spring had a hand in it.
You wake up at the regular time,
from your normal sleep
to see through your window
the white sight of a pear tree
suddenly, fully in bloom
and just as abruptly,
the weight that mountained down
on your heart, crumbles to nothing.
From which we learn: even if you’re quite determined
to hold out unconsoled on account of one fair flower
lost last Autumn to the first cruel frost,
Spring appeases, defeats you with ease,
when it makes you a present
that fills your whole window,
a brobdingnagian bouquet,
a treeful of glee.
Tel Aviv
Joy that comes in little glimpses
tiny delights unnoticed by most,
that come without asking and go without saying—
between two Bauhaus buildings
with their rounded balconies,
built beside the beach of Tel Aviv,
a sudden sight of sea—
a sunset’s colors flashing back
from shop windows,
better than irridescent,
nearly psychedelic—
transfigured city!
Mythical city! Like hidden Kitezh
visible for an instant,
risen from the waves
to sing an unexpected blessing—
Magical city, glittering with hints,
like Camelot or Thebes,
a city built by music, raised by song:
stones floated into place to shape your walls
rear imagined palaces, just as now
words thread themselves
like polished coral beads
on shining lines to describe you.
Rachel
The voice you recognize in my songs
is hers, as surely as the blood in my veins
flowed in hers, my far fore-mother,
it flowed in hers, the same.
Any house seems small,
all indoors has the feel of a trap.
I’m never at ease in a city,
never understood the appeal of an address.
What can I say, except that I came
from that same Rachel whose scarf fluttered free
as a nomad’s banner in desert wind?
I always know where I’m going,
don’t need sign or map or even street
to keep to the path that’s mine alone.
My legs remember, my feet repeat:
Rachel!
—as she went then, so now I go.
the complete poetry of Rachel Blaustein, in Mildred Faintly’s translations, has been published. Find the book here.