Nurit Zarchi Poems

What's left after long walks
In circles? Learning to cuddle yourself
Everything that strikes, children, man or wind
All turns into foam. On the seashore, breakers swallowed their highs
The wave vomited the old mermaids
Heavy from shells and bones, too bubbly to be loved
Unlike the seals, beneath their dignity
To shout from abyss.
They're hushed better than the mortar's rocks,
They frequently climb upon on the ocean's parietal.
Like turtles drying out in the sun turned over on their backs,
And their blue leaks out and fills the sea,
Now you know.
...

אחרי הליכה ארוכה בעיגול
מה נותר? ללמוד לחבק את עצמך
כל מה שפגע, ילדים, גברים או רוח
הגל הקיא את בנות הים הקשישות
הכול הפך קצף. על קו החוף מישברים בלעו את גובהם
כבדות מקונכיות ועצם, קוצפות מידי לאהבה
לצעוק ממעמקים, שתוקות יותר מסלעי הטיט,
שלא ככלבי הים, לא מכבודן
שטיפסו פעמים רבות על כתלי המצולה.
כצבות הפוכות הן מתייבשות בשמש,
וניגר מהן כחול למלא את הים,
עכשיו אתה יודע.
...

no, need for you to be hospitalized its
just a wave, picking us up from the shore
on its rhythms and foams, do understand
everything happens forward -

Hello - the girls echo, no time.
We can no longer see you.
A skyscraper wave approaches us, creeps, folds, swallows
and you can't help it,
can't help a thing, as always.

With your boat made of book pages,
Move back to the shore, go!
The French revolution wasn't about you, mom.
At last you'll get to be an audience, look at us,
they holler from America.
We're all healthy: the kids, the president
all drinking tapioca.

Hush, it's me, in a foreign language
maybe it's impossible to hear me
America is noisy.

Hush the sea line rustles
what am I, a Saint Francis, preaching to
passing seagulls, shells and clarias.
A naked shore starches against me -
Did the new world reach me?
...

לא, את לא צריכה להתאשפז זה
רק גל לוקח אותנו מן הים
על קצבים וקצפים. תביני
הכול קורה קדימה -
שלום - מהדהדות הילדות, אין פנאי.
מפה אנחנו לא רואות אותך יותר.
מולנו גל רב קומתי מתקרב, מתקפל, בולע,
ואת לא יכולה לעזור בכלום,
כלום, כמו תמיד.

עם הספינות שלך, העשויות דף ספר
המהפכה הצרפתית לא הייתה עליך, אימא.
צאי לחוף, זוזי.
סופסוף תהיי קהל, תביטי בנו
הן צועקות מאמריקה.
כולנו בריאים: הילדים, הנשיא
כולם שותים טפיוקה.

ששש, זה אני בשפה זרה
ואולי לא ניתן לשמוע אותי
באמריקה רעש.
...

Sometimes Abel. They
themselves didn't know which is which.

Then goody god still grinned covertly
and eagles came to peck their resting
hands below the knowledge tree.
How could they tell themselves apart

if Cain was wearing Jacob's hands
and Abel - Esau's voice.
when I met then, neither could I

tell them apart by
the shadow of the mirror in my hand.
...

ולפעמים הבל. עצמם
לא ידעו מי.
אז אלוהימי עוד חייך לעצמו
ועיטים באו לנקר מידיהם
כשנחו בצל עץ הדעת.
איך יכלו לדעת מי.

אם קין לבש ידי יעקב
והבל - קולו עשו.
כשפגשתי אותם, גם אני

לא יכולתי להבדיל
בניהם בצל המראה, בצילי.
...

That very morning after the guests said,
"Your branches are as splendid as paradise,"
the order was given: Cut them off!
Now my clenched fists fall to earth,
their anger evaporating in the sun.

I should have contracted inside myself.
A war is taking place in the yard. Bitter as wolves,
man and tree mark off their sovereign borders.

I see through his eyes: shadows of drops on the path,
a thicket advancing toward him.
But how to stop?

A garden, darkness-filled mouth,
its eyes lids blinking,
its lust-spotted stamens drawn out,
setting fire to the ice of the jasmine.

Did he invade in order to heal,
to illuminate me to the edge of my darkness?
Now how will I fight on behalf of the garden?
I wrap myself in the shadow of my broken ribs.
...

In the morning the toothbrushes stare at me,
like children waking up in a strange house.
The skin of the flung clothes, like fowl emptied of flight.

No civilization ever fought this way with death,
raising every detail to the level of a public event.
The heel of air you left in the gaping shoe -
the face's relief in the pillow.

Eternal life doesn't begin at birth,
it's the result of yielding to difficult rules.
Even if the sun is but a reflection through day and night.
And don't ring him up at his home.

To the sound of the heart's shell asking for a little sleep,
the house approaches the kitchen,
to be consoled by the glass you left on the table,
Undenied vestige of "Once upon a time."

What did the bed say compiling the thrills of love,
why the whispering? Come and hold me
for I'm a statue of air.
...

They present me with a bill
because I wasn't happy,
and always amaze me with their vocabulary.

They request a receipt for my fate
and encourage me to think
that because of my cat
we live in the wrong town.

In a time of national struggles
they refer me to my mother
as if the fact that I'm a mother is a fiction.

A few of them serve cake
that I bake, and want thanks for the invention of electricity,
winter, and jam. That I don't like jam
doesn't matter, because anyway they are editing my memoirs.

Secretly in their hearts they think I own stocks
which I'm not likely to share
and when I arrive to distribute my borrowed gifts
they are always too tired or concerned with proportions.

They pronounce the word ‘narcissism' with closed eyes
as though sucking on a water pipe,
muttering at me with disgust
as if they were slamming a window on a draft or a bug.
When I stopped being afraid
I saw they had targeted my need for air.

When they leave, they forsake the emptiness of their cups,
and in return tend to take my dictionary with them,
disappearing into their lives like the land into the Dutch sea,
without leaving me any language in which to stir my pain.
...