Ronny Someck

translated from the Hebrew by Barbara Goldberg and Moshe Dor

The Fire Stays in Red

End of December and the green 
of King Saul Avenue copies itself 
from leaves, the fire remains in red 
and the yellow is yellow.  Tonight
during intervals of sudden rain she talks 
of Martin Buber.  Such a Hidden Light 
from traffic signals and car beams.  
And in my body her words suspended 
like wires, under which the memory 
of her swirls, a cropduster's acrobatics.

Hidden Light: title of Martin Buber's famous collection of Hasidic tales. The hidden light, or the light of seven days of Creation, is reserved, by legend, for the righteous

Punk Poem Beginning with Two Lines by Chekhov

A pistol appearing in the first act
must be fired in the third.  The barrel
will spit out jacket buckles, iron chains
and the stiletto steps of the woman who will slice  
Yehuda Halevy Road to smithereens.  In the meantime
she dyes the hair at her nape red 
like a Bedouin marking sheep.  
Who knows, maybe a shepherd's 
flute is the fringe of her dream.

Another Winter

On the nearby river boats painted pink sail on another 
errand, the man renting boats goes through another winter 
with rolled-up sleeves and he can always ask, "What about 
your Dutch friend, has she come back?"

---

Ronny Someck, born in 1951 in Baghdad, Iraq, was brought to Israel when he was two years old. Jasmine, a book of his selected poems, appeared in Arabic in 1995. He has published seven volumes of poetry as well as several CDs with the jazz musician Elliot Sharp, and has received Israel's Prime Minister's Award. His book Rice Paradise is forthcoming from Dryad Press. Moshe Dor has some 35 books to his credit; he has been former President of the Israeli PEN Centre; literary editor of Maariv, one of Israel's foremost newspapers; Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at American University; and a member of the first delegation of Israeli writers to be formally invited to the former Soviet Union. Barbara Goldberg is the author of five volumes of poetry. Together with Moshe Dor, she has co-edited two anthologies of contemporary Israeli poetry, most recently After the First Rain: Israeli Poems on War and Peace (Syracuse University Press, 1998). contents | next