Roni Margulies Poems

They feel let down by the sea:
Some haven't flown over blue waters
or tasted fish for years,
haven't even seen waves break
...

I remember how a narrow beam of light
fell on my bed through the gap by the curtain,
one end waking me up by touching my eyelids,
the other resting on Elsa's cheek.
...

Diving into the black waters at Salacak every evening,
he'd swim, sometimes easily, sometimes against the waves,
forgetting all he'd left behind the instant he reached
the woman with jet-black hair and coal-black eyes.
...

My first snowfall at Beşiktaş, in the very places
I dreamt of during all those winters in London.
...

I had a blue pullover,
a cross between turquoise and sky blue.
It was my favourite, the one I wore most often.
We went through a lot together, it and I,
...

The Maas is the oldest river in the world.
It has flowed now for about a million years.
I never knew, they can apparently tell
the age of rivers, like that of men.
...

Nearly as many years ago as my age,
the Germans razed this city to the ground.
Not that there'd have been much resistence,
but the Nazis were in something of a rush.
...

Our lift talks to me, as I go up
or down, in a gentle, protective tone.
"We are here," she says "you may go".
She tells me the floor we have reached,
...

"Rot", says my dictionary, means "muddy".
"A" means water, this I found surprising. "Rotta",
then, is "muddy water", and "Dam" is obvious.
Rotterdam is a dam, therefore, on muddy waters.
...

I walk down the Dordtselaan almost every day
to buy bread and cigarettes at Albert Heijn's,
and malodorous French cheese, dark
Belgian beers and cold pork products.
...