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THE LITTLE PRINCE GROWS OLD


Perhaps this is it.
I've had my fill. Done
what I have done
no need to carry on.
I have given the words their due, love
hers. And as for me?
I am become poet of the kingdom,
where two reign by night and one by day.
In my sleep -- I dream within me. By day --
the dreams die. Towards evening the king ascends
to light the lanterns
hanging on a low cloud. And the flame, like life itself,
sealed within the glass.


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MOUTH TO MOUTH

We come and we go
and meet over the doorstep as if
on the edge of earth
we stand and we move on
and the darkness between us
freezes
how we
blindly pass black ice
from mouth to mouth.


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THE LANGUAGES IN THE LAND OF ISRAEL
 

My mother's mouth is soft
like the cry of guilt-feelings
wild flesh between my mother's lips
a trembling and moist wolf cub
in a woodland winter. She drops him
and gathers him up, nibbling
at this fur, purring whispers at his ear.

Wherever I go, whenever I run,
whatever distance draw us part, I knew
her whispers would grow into guilt-feelings

Here in the Land of Israel, the Hebrew tongue no longer
takes her into account; the words fall
tasteless from her lips
her weakened tongue rolls a wheelchair in her hands
as she turns words
from Yiddish into Hebrew

Stones in a treacherous field. Scorpions
at their moist sides. They approach with yellow tongues
guilt-feelings, hanging themselves on her tongue.

translated from the Hebrew by Mel Rosenberg




RUINS

1.
To build scratch. That is,
cease fire. Let the bomb, the shell in mid-air, stop
among ricochets of splinters and the blast of shock waves
that draw the tongue of flame out a window
as if from the red mouth
of a juggler at the circus
spitting out fire, swallowing love.

2.

Seen from earth the lovers are brave parachutists, the enemy
firing on them while they drift in heaven;
like wild geese, they're halted, recoil momentarily, as in surprise.
A breeze touches my face and makes me say
one must build from scratch, behind the ruins, go down
on expectant knees to wait until the ruins are ashes,
until there are no towns, neither sacred nor profane, only
the dunes to begin from ashes.
And the lovers still drift, still float, alive, not yet touched by flames,
and the wind passes through the parachutes without stiring the ashes,
which are all there is to build with -- dunes of dark ashes like waves.

Now, when the slowly descending lovers set foot on the face
of the earth's foundation,
the wind will sift through the ashes.
Maybe then we can stand our ground.


Translated from the Hebrew by Henry Taylor


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SNAKESKIN



The snake sloughs its skin
to the sound of summer flutes,
facing a sun breaking through naked iron wire
lead breakable by fire
oh, the stubborn
snake
sidewinding
tracks of death
on the desert's palm.


Translated from the Hebrew by Barbara Goldberg


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Poetry by Israeli Poet
         Yakov Besser




PROTEST POEM


I slip by the shade of the tree
at the door of my parent's house, once my beloved home.
This cypress planted like a finger pointing
from the ground, binding root to root. Interlacing
its short arms. Embracing its trunk. Keeping its head
up in the sky -- an inverted excalmation mark ¡
Dotted at times with stars trembling like tins in the wind.
On hazy days a cloudlet is speared on its erectness, a sort of
saintly halo

Not me.
Only now and then. In the evening, passing by or, really,
one cloud say slipping by at a respectful distance, anxious
not to touch the fringe of that enchanted shade, I blurt
on the wind a bitter protest that the branches catch, about
people who lived in this house, passed by in the shade,
as their lives -- I will say it -- slipped by me, not knowing

but also about my own life that's passing me by.
I, who can now and then touch, indeed, who've seen
living wound and fathomless abyss. Yes, even love's come back.
The eternal white bird that now soars, now plummets to hell.
That is always protest as well as love. Let neither pass me by
nor soar without me. Let me not be late nor trip
on the fringe of shade nor, after all is said and done,
stand -- head bowed, disgraced -- in the presence
of the wind leaping awake in the branches of this cypress
suddenly leaning towards me like a broken exclamation mark. ¯ ·


translated from the Hebrew by Riva Rubin




Yaakov Besser :

Yaakov Besser (b. 1934; Poland) fled in 1940 with his parents to Russia and then to the Ukraine to escape Nazi persecution. Besser arrived in Israel in 1950. Currently the editor of lton 77, an Israeli literary monthly, he has been a prolific author since he began publishing in 1965. His work includes eight volumes of translations of Polish and Russian poets.


Books Published in Hebrew:

Winter of Nineteen-Forty (poetry), Eked, 1965 [Horef Elef Tesha Meot Arbaim]
A Tangle of Roots (poetry), Eked, 1967 [Be-Svach Ha-Shorashim]
Fragile Lead (poetry), Eked, 1968 [Oferet Shevurah]
Poems of this Journey (poetry), Eked, 1969 [Shirim Ba-Halichah Ha-Zot]
In Moments of Inevitable Retreat (poetry), Eked, 1970 [Be-Regaim Shel Nesigah Bilti Nimna'at]
Selected Poems (poetry), Eked, 1973 [Mi-Shirei Yaakov Besser]
Chosen Field (poetry), Sifriat Poalim, 1976 [Sadeh Skulah]
Worry(poetry), Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1976 [Deagah]
Even if Not (poetry), Makor-Agudat Hasofrim/Yachdav, 1979 [Gam Im Lo]
Beyond the Ruin (poetry), 1961-1981, Sifriat Poalim, 1982 [Me-Ahorei Ha-Harisot]
They're Already Mowing the Yard (poetry), Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1986 [Mishehu Kvar Mekaseah Et Ha Hatzer]
Fistheart(poetry), Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1990 [Egroflev]
My Mother's Face I Recognize (poetry), Gvanim, 1996 [Et Pnei Imi Ani Mezahe]

Books in Translation
Selected Poems
Polish: Krakow, Wydawnictwo Miniatura, 1991

Individual poems have been published in:
Arabic, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, and Spanish.

The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature