Translated from Hebrew by Tsipi Keler
 
Saturday noon, on the beach,
the tan grandson burrows into
a dug-up basin padded with sand.
I observe him from the height of my age,
again see my body draw a circle,
warm and sticky of a boy pissing in the sand.
Time flows between us, a golden froth,
and stings my lips with salt.
From the sunken mold of the sand mask
the boy that I was comes back to me,
sprawled, foaming and wallowing, coddled by the sun.
A passing cloud suddenly darkens the light,
my face takes on the hardness of graying plaster:
the short-lived joy, a forgotten image from childhood,
all is swept back, dripping between the fingers
in the rhythmic beat of retreating waves.
 
 

Translated from Hebrew by Tsipi Keler
 
In the Casino, under Hatzbaya,
spring water rumble,
imprisoned in coves of concrete,
bolting racing spinning to press out
powerfully driving a rusty Ferris wheel,
a remnant of forgotten fairs.
On the torn lattice seat
I notice a Druze kid
flying, letting out a shout:
an unforgettable landscape
is suddenly revealed to him.
In the dense grasses all around
the blackened corpses of tanks,
an ashen mound, helmets, abandoned gear
roll about, swept south down the river
toward a blinding horizon
toward places that even from the top of the wheel
one can only guess at the distance.
 
 

Translated from Hebrew by Tsipi Keler
 
for Sima and Ephy Eyal
 
Poetry is a sudden process
of verbal compression.
I remember well one such illumination:
her father was a famous artist
who used to load his brush
with one bullet many --
to explode on the canvas with first touch.
He drew the beautiful head of his daughter
and shook his head with pity at my sweaty pages:
I feel for the two of you,
she doesn`t know yet
that a poet is a continuous process
of the pain of existence.