Rachel Bluwstein Sela Poems

"Only the dead don't die"

Only they are left me, they are faithful still
whom death's sharpest knife can no longer kill.

At the turn of the highway, at the close of day
they silently surround me, they quietly go my way.

A true pact is ours, a tie time cannot dissever.
Only what I have lost is what I possess forever.
...

I have not sung you, my country,
not brought glory to your name
with the great deeds of a hero
or the spoils a battle yields.
But on the shores of the Jordan
my hands have planted a tree,
and my feet have made a pathway
through your fields.

Modest are the gifts I bring you.
I know this, mother.
Modest, I know, the offerings
of your daughter:
Only an outburst of song
on a day when the light flares up,
only a silent tear
for your poverty.
...

Meeting, hardly meeting, suffices:
one quick glance, fragments of obscure words,
and again waves of happiness and pain
sweep over everything and rage.

The dam of oblivion I had built in my defence
is as if it had never been.
I kneel on the shore of the roaring sea
and drink my fill.
...

to Chana Meisel

Spring and early morning -
do you remember that spring, that day? -
our garden at the foot of Mount Carmel,
facing the blue of the bay?

You are standing under an olive,
and I, like a bird on a spray,
am perched on the silvery tree-top.
We are cutting black branches away.

From below, your saw's rhythmic buzzing
reaches me in my tree,
and I rain down from above you
fragments of poetry.

Remember that morning, that gladness?
They were - and disappeared,
like the short spring of our country,
the short spring of our years.
...

Conspiracy of spring
a man awakes and through the window sees
a pear tree blossoming,
and instantly the mountain weighing on his heart
dissolves and disappears.

O you will understand! Is there a grieving man
who can hold on stubbornly
to a single flower that withered
in last year's autumn gale,
when spring consoles and with a smile
presents him with a giant wreath of flowers
at his very window?
...