“Hebrew and You”, Poem in translation
Hebrew and You
A.
Draw a circle around yourself
and pray seventy years
for rain that it might come
and for the melody.
The carob flower’s destiny
is to imbue its scent
in your seed and in your poem
enemy of families,
enemy of majority,
of nation and hubris
to bear the yoke of existence without poetry.
B.
Draw a circle around yourself
and know: it is you
who will survive when all goes bad
and when not a thing remains here—
not a state, nor the memory
of a state, only your poetry
will be the dam, which will
with its music stop waters
of forgetfulness.
Chant it,
you are the dam,
know yourself.
A halo will cover everything,
resting, like a pillow
on a broken, foreign present—
but Hebrew
she will remain alive, after
all, just exactly as
she remained before they came
those who yelled about
eternity, the past, and all the rest
who sacrifice in vain.
Bandage her
and believe in her:
she is wounded now.
She is in mortal danger now,
in need of your poems,
your seeds, your words,
of that blossoming
that only you can bring forth for her
when things have settled down
when all the rest have disappeared
in this manner
or another.
Draw a circle around yourself
and pray seventy years
for rain that it might come
and for the melody.
About the translator:
Shoshana Olidort is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at Stanford University, and poetry editor of Mantis, Stanford’s journal of poetry, criticism and translation. Her research focuses on poetry as a mode of identity performance through a consideration of five Jewish women poets writing in Hebrew, Yiddish and English in the 20th century. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Jewish Review of Books, The Paris Review, and the Times Literary Supplement, among other publications.
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