Tuvia Ruebner

אֵין כֹּרַח לִכְתֹּב שִׁיר עַל כַּדּוּרֶגֶל
גַּם בְּהִתְקַיֵּם הַמּוֹנְדִּיאָל 2010.
הֲרֵי רֹב רֻבָּם שֶׁל הַצּוֹפִים מִסְתַּדְּרִים
לְלֹא שִׁירִים, בָּרוּךְ הַשֵּׁם.
אֲבָל אִם אֹמַר בְּשִׁירִי לַכַּדּוּרַגְלָן הַשָּׁחֹר מִגָּאנָה
כִּי רָצִיתִי מְאֹד שֶׁקְּבוּצָתוֹ תְּנַצֵּחַ, וְכִי הַשּׁוֹפֵט
יָכוֹל הָיָה לִקְבֹּעַ 'שַׁעַר' כְּשֶׁכַּדּוּרוֹ הַנִּפְלָא
נֶחְסַם לֹא בִּידֵי הַשּׁוֹעֵר אֶלָּא בְּתוֹךְ הַשַּׁעַר פְּנִימָה
בְּיָדָיו שֶׁל שַׂחְקַן אוּרוּגְוָאִי רָגִיל...
לַחֻקִּים יֵש פֵּרוּשֵׁי פֵּרוּשִׁים וְאָסוּר שֶׁיְּטֻשְׁטַשׁ הַהֶבְדֵּל
בֵּין חֹק לְעָרִיצוּת. לָכֵן יָכוֹל הָיָה הַשּׁוֹפֵט לְוַתֵּר
עַל הַכַּרְטִיס הָאָדֹם - הַמִּשְׂחַק הָיָה צִבְעוֹנִי דַיּוֹ -
וּלְוַתֵּר עַל הַפֶּנְדֶל עִם הַקּוֹרָה הַקַּנָּאִית.
אוֹ אָז, אָחִי, אִשְׁתְּךָ הָיְתָה מְגַלָּה מֵחָדָשׁ אֶת אַהֲבָתָהּ
אַהֲבָה גֵּאָה כְּמוֹ דְּרוֹם-אָמֶרִיקָאִית, וּמְחַבֶּקֶת אוֹתְךָ
גַּם אַחֲרֵי הַמִּשְׁגָּל הַשְּׁבִיעִי בִּפְנֵי בְּתוּלָה מְאִירוֹת
וּבִנְךָ הָיָה נוֹשֵׂא עֵינָיו אֵלֶיךָ כְּאוֹמֵר:
אֵין עוֹד אַבָּא כָּמוֹךָ. וַחֲבֵרֶיךָ הָיוּ מַזְמִינִים לִשְׁתּוֹת
עַל חֶשְׁבּוֹנָם וְשָׁרִים אִתְּךָ עַד אוֹר הַבֹּקֶר
וְלִישֹׁן הָיִיתָ הוֹלֵךְ בְּהַרְגָּשָׁה מְתוּקָה שֶׁחַיֶּיךָ
לֹא לַשָּׁוְא הָיוּ, אַדְּרַבָּא, הֵם יָפִים, הֵם יָפִים יָפִים
וְיָדַיִם פְּסוּלוֹת לֹא תּוּכַלְנָה לִגְרֹעַ כְּקֹרֶט מִיָּפְיָם.
כָּל זֶה עָשׂוּי הָיָה לִקְרוֹת לוּ קָרָאתָ שִׁירָה עִבְרִית
אוֹ לַחֲלוּפִין לוּ כּוֹתֵב הָיִיתִי אֲנִי שִׁיר בִּשְׂפַת אָשַׁנְטִי.
...

There's no need to write a poem about soccer
even during the World Cup.
Most of the spectators manage
without poetry, thank God.
But I'd tell the player from Ghana
that I really wanted his team to win, and that the referee
should have awarded him a goal when his fabulous kick
was blocked not by the goalkeeper but inside
at the hands of an ordinary Uruguayan player…
There are many ways to interpret rules and one mustn't blur the line
between law and tyranny. And so the referee could have waived
the red card — the game was colorful enough —
as well as the penalty kick and the jealous goal post.
Then, brother, your wife would rediscover her love,
as proud as a South American's, and embrace you
with the glowing face of a virgin even after a seventh coupling
and your son would raise his eyes to say
you're the best father. Your friends would treat you
at the bar, singing along with you until dawn
and you'd fall asleep with the sweet feeling that your life
was not lived in vain, on the contrary, it is so very lovely,
and wrong moves don't detract an iota from its beauty.
All this might have taken place if you read Hebrew poetry
or I had written a poem in the language of the Ashanti.
...

Bratislava is Pressburg is Pozsony.
For me it is Pressburg.
My teacher Mr. Wurm from the grade school
took a class photo from his drawer and pointed:
this one was a Nazi and these two also. That one
was especially cruel. This one died in Russia
and this one was deported. Which Jewish students
survived and are still alive - I don't know.
Pressburg was a trilingual city. The fourth language
is silence.
Have there ever been limits to evil?
Pressburg lies next to the Danube, at the edge of a Carpathian range.
Near the cathedral was the Neologists' synagogue in a sort of Moorish style.
Fish Market Square stretches out below
and the Street of the Jews began above it. The Danube flows as always.
I'm old. I can only move forward slowly.
I was born in Pressburg. I had a mother, a father and a sister.
I had, it seems to me, a small, happy childhood in Pressburg.
Once the entire Danube froze.
The Celts built a fortress here, as did the princes of
greater Moravia. The Romans called the place
Possonium. A very old city
so old I don't know it any more.
Farewell, my love, it's hard to imagine.
...

Zurich is rubbing against the Zurichberg.
Zurich doesn't like being tickled under its fur.
Zurich likes order, it's hardworking, not necessarily welcoming
or particularly warmhearted, but direct, fair, more
or less so. And who doesn't think about profit? Not everything that glitters
is gold. Zurich doesn't glitter. It's sober, doesn't like
to guess, to solve riddles. Zurich likes facts, the Bahnhofstrasse,
the Fraumuenster, zum Storchen, guests even more, not always
poets, the house where Buechner died, and Lenin lived. The Kunsthaus.
In der I 37, the Uetliberg.
If an old man calls things by their names - that's enough.
One word - an entire life.
And it is not easy to insist upon order in this orderly city which is
already a memory. A memory that surely
emerges suddenly, hides, leaps. Hard to restrain.
In memory, death is struck dumb. He doesn't have the right to speak. But
Zurich has also changed. We
have changed more. Zurich is just Zurich in the end.
It isn't exhausted. It doesn't look back
with a sort of uncertainty. The lake doesn't abandon it
even when it's all wings on a sunny day.
I almost forgot: in Zurich we were all still here
together, we sat around one table for our evening meal
one by one, all of us.
...

Hebron is a very ancient city.
Our father Abraham is buried there with his wife Sarah
they say. Very holy for a land that lives off death.
In Hebron in the morning they eat pita and olives and white cheese in olive oil.
On holidays a lamb is sacrificed.
The people of Hebron love the slaughter.
Did they learn this from Jacob's sons Shimon and Levi?
It's been
a long time.
And those things happened in Nablus; it's different in Dura, in the Hebron area.
In Dura today, three fathers are lost to their children now.
The Hebron area has a bad reputation: it's a stiff-necked place.
In 1929, sixty-eight yeshiva students, women and children were murdered in Hebron.
Oh tomb of Abraham our father (they say), our father and theirs.
Oh the young, frightened soldiers. Oh, March 20, 1998.
The moon nearly full, but it was still daylight. Workers from the Hebron area
were riding home. On the Hebron Road, at Tarkumia, there is a checkpoint.
Soldiers stood at the checkpoint. The driver of the car lost control. The car
rushed toward the checkpoint. The checkpoint commander
was hurt and thrown in the opposite direction.
There is also another version.
The soldiers thought they wanted to run him over.
It's hard to know whom to believe and what.
They opened fire in an instant.
According to instructions. According to orders.
How fast it happens. How fast
one loses shape, becomes something else:
immobile, a plaster face, glass eyes.
Or limp arms afterwards, words in the mouth once again instead of screams.
Yesterday more pita and olives and perhaps sex before dawn.
Yesterday more logarithms, history, girls on the beach. And suddenly
the road is spotted with red. The moon nearly full, white as a bone.
Running to and fro, shouts, onward, afterwards the stones.
Do stones reproduce? Slowly, there's no stopping it, the stones are fruitful and multiply.
...

Jerusalem left Jerusalem and ran away.
That thing up there, surely it can't be Jerusalem?
...

Every day he changed his suit
his shirt, underwear, socks, shoes, everything.
About us he didn't have a change of heart.
Every day after lunch he would rest
on the sofa for exactly 10 minutes
or maybe 12. He never hid the hole
that ashes from one of his (six daily) cigars
burned in the English fabric. He also smoked
40 Egyptians (of the Austrian tobacco monopoly)
that he drew out from a thin orange pack.
He had tobacco poisoning once.
Joyce's Ulysses stood next to Heine on the shelves behind glass.
Did he order the book, or was it a present?
His daily route led him nowhere but the office and back.
On his Sunday walk, you could count on him, stick in hand, in knickerbockers,
a kilometer or two to the inn in the forest
near the iron well, which afterwards he called his hike.
His hand promised tranquility, his eyes - a better future.
I've never been given faith like his.
Was he worried? As a proud Freemason,
he never revealed his secret. He made plans
and almost carried them out. He, who would only ride trains wearing gloves
and ate sandwiches with a knife and fork,
would become a poultry farmer, would clean their waste in Shavei Zion!
The war defeated everything.
He stood a little to the side and shed a tear to himself
when we parted at the train station and all that remains of him is
the wave of a hand.
I saw him once more in a dream: a white doll
all wrapped in plaster, straight-backed on a slant in a crowded car
coming from the direction of the Danube.
Now he looks at me from the wall and his eyes question
if I'll ever know, really know, one can't
separate life from death, and sometimes language is nothing but
mourning for lost tenderness.
...

1.
Are you asking me about time?
It's no friend of mine. Why talk
about faceless time? Because it will never look you in the eye,
but suddenly strikes and claims
there's nothing like it to heal wounds?
Because it whispers sweet consolations in your ear,
crushes your body in one blow,
tosses it away at a forsaken angle?

2.
The son, the son asking "What's this?"
after a goodbye embrace, then, at a foreign airport -
this, this is time.
This is time standing still.
This is timeless time.
Too bad for all the wise people who try to say
smart or clever things.
Woe to all this knowledge.

3.
What a sweet dream for the one who can't last
in his situation, impatient, he seeks
to shed his skin and fix his eyes on the second hand of the clock
which runs on as if chasing its shadow
onward only, away from here,
only onward, always onward
always, always
to the place it came from.
...

Moldy sack of flour, inflated
white wineskin, the savior
is removed from the spotted wood, his
not-quite-a-head slack, fallen
like a small, airless balloon. One man holds
this ugly doll by an arm
staring with disbelief,
pity and fear. Others give
and take, their lost faces
look up and down.
A fat man in a turban
stands and stares,
satisfied with his potbelly.
Against the dark heavens
someone kneels, slowly allowing
the sheet to drop down.
Everything is in darkness. The trees too.
Only the body shines.

No, not exactly. Again. From the beginning.
Soft white flesh, so it seems,
living, breathing, moving its arms,
even loving. Outside the frame,
one guesses they will put him to rest in the ground.
Put him to rest? Will he rest? Eternal rest.
No. Not exactly.

The figure is a figure, but
only apparently. The scene is well-known,
apparently. The figures,
the bloodied, silent wood, heaven
all color - colors are colors -
but from where and where to? Darkness. The painting
hangs in Munich. I saw it.
I saw it? Isn't it
before, behind,
under and above, alone
like a bird flying
in a last breath, floating a moment
above a familiar
face that is no more, an imagined
soul -
...