Translated by Ayelet Tsabari
HOME
What smell lingered in the rooms?
patties frying from the kitchen,
laundered linen stretched
on metal beds. Rain through windows, dust
of words sweetened as talc. Shirts’ collars
blossomed with perfume,
which was once roses,
which were once rain and earth
and a yearning for sun and life.
I sat on the knees of others.
Their stomach was my spine,
their arms - my walls.
I had a home made of people.
HUNGER
In the middle of the night I am ravenous.
When morning rises in my faraway land
I pour yogurt into a cup,
grab two cherry tomatoes,
and eat while watching the snowy darkness.
My mother also foraged through the refrigerator
every night, driven by bodily confusion,
and nocturnal hunger, pot lids rejoiced
like cymbals. So did her mother, and her grandmother.
Generations of nightly gourmands.
But I eat now like trees
who’ve been planted far from their native land
and blossom twice: once in the new spring
and once in the spring from which they had come
Rooted in two soils
awake and dreaming
at the same time,
every night I welcome
a morning that has yet to dawn.
GRACE BEFORE MEALS
My father is standing in my kitchen,
baking sweet potatoes
to bring the flavor of mothers
back to me
and resurrect a world
where loss is not uttered.
My father’s hands slice fine answers to all my questions
and arrange them in baking dishes:
reasons, results,
consequences, actions.
We learned it the hard way: this is a world
of eaters and eaten: the sorrow eats
our hearts and we
eat the sorrow. Hastily,
in big bites, with coarse salt,
and gentle hearts. We no longer linger around the table.
lest our sorrow swallow us whole.
Blessed are you who brings forth bread from the earth,
who sustains the entire world
with grace, kindness and sorrow.
Blessed are you who created my father.
