Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Two Poems

2021; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 95; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wlt.2021.0198

1945-8134

Sigal Naor Perelman, Lyor Shternberg,

Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies

POETRY Sigal Naor Perelman (b. 1968) is a literary scholar and editor, founder and co-director of the Derech Ruach organization for the promotion of the study of the humanities in Israel, and teaches in the Department of Jewish History at Haifa University. She has published two research books on Natan Zach and Noah Stern. Her first volume of poetry, Machluta, was published in 2020. Lyor Shternberg (b. 1967) is a poet, translator, and a teacher of literature. His seventh volume of poetry, The Bread, the Salt (collecting twenty years of writing), was published recently. Two Poems by Sigal Naor Perelman A Poem for Nitzan I smuggled you across the border, that no hand of those who find joy in their labor might touch you no hand of those dealing in blood, though no one misses you as I do, your father perhaps, or your brothers, I saved you when you told me: Mom, they’re fixing us like buns in the oven so that we’ll come out at the right time ready to serve the sword, though constantly, every evening I miss you and count your good days far away from here. Your good heart stands firm against the flood of brow-raisers, but it is I my daughter who saved you, for since the day you were born I whispered in your ear: Don’t fall for the enamored talk of destruction. We are strangers to any man. And then you refused to sing “To Be a Free Nation,” you couldn’t say free because you knew: not free like a bullet shot through a rifle’s scope to the head, for much is the grievance and much the sacrifice and the heart untouched by suffering as if eighty years is not man’s lot upon this earth My daughter, both of us shall know that from the day you were born I pushed you away so that you’ll learn to live without me across the border with a friend, a lover, my forsaken heart, one bun saved for good from the all-consuming oven Come and Go In the room the women talk about everything that can enter the mouth, a cookie from the buffet or a dress from the magazine or Courbet’s Origin of the World in the Musée d’Orsay. One of them had been there last summer with her ex-husband. What do you think, girls, about the shooting soldier, could have been my son, yours, hers. Did anyone read the latest thing from Grossman, Moroccan pillows on the sofa like guests in the living room, guarding the door, who is that coming, let’s read, never understood poetry, but Poe is cool, we really like him since high school. Translations from the Hebrew By Lyor Shternberg WORLDLIT.ORG 65 PHOTO BY BARBARA ZANDOVAL ON UNSPLASH / PERELMAN PHOTO BY RONI FRYDMAN / SHTERNBERG PHOTO BY ORNA ITAMAR ...