World
Literature Today V. 63,
No. 1, winter 1989, 19‑26.
Reprinted
in:
POETRY
BY WOMEN IN
AND
THE WAR IN
Karen
Alkalay‑Gut
Despite a constant state of war for
forty years, before 1982 Hebrew poetry had almost no examples of political
poems or poems about war by women. There
are a number of reasons for this selective silence, and certainly there was a
precedent in history for the exclusion of women in the essential use of the
Hebrew language. Hebrew had been used
only in prayer for many years and was a scholars' language, the property of
religious men, and most women had little actual knowledge of it until the
twentieth century. While Jewish women
may have been literate in other languages, there were no encouragements to have
more than a rudimentary ritual knowledge of the prayers in Hebrew. When the dream of a Jewish homeland was
revitalized in the late nineteenth century, however, the women who helped to
bring Hebrew to modern times by writing poetry found appreciative
audiences. Because Hebrew was a language
consciously resurrected for daily use, it needed all the help it could get from
the world of literature and the competition for publication and honors between
men and women writers that characterized the literature of the
The socialist basis of the society
emphasized the equality of women, and these ideals were put into practice in
the fields, in the hospitals, and on the building sites. Yet when women wrote they restricted their
subjects to selected matters, and described only their new and long‑anticipated
landscape, their love of the country, and their emotions. They did not touch the one central subject
that pervaded the poetry of male writers, the necessity of military defense and
the tragic loss of life.
Poetry by men concerning war until 1982
was concerned not with its justification, but with the fact of the existence of
war, and the poets of the first generation of the
In
the morning the sun strolled in the woods
with
me and father,
my
right hand in his left.
A
knife flashed from between the trees like lightning.
and
I shrink from my eyes' terror before the blooded leaves.
Father,
father, come rush to save Isaac
so
no one will be missing from the meal at
It
is I who am slaughtered, my son.
Already
my blood is on the leaves.
And
father's voice was stilled,
his
face pale
I
wanted to scream, writhing against belief
and
tearing open my eyes
I
awoke.
And
my right hand was drained of blood. (1)
The
sense of personal involvement in interrelated political, spiritual and military
issues ‑ and the authority to comment on these issues ‑ is
extremely apparent.
Rachel Blaustein (1890‑1931),
with a degree in agronomy, worked the fields and tended the animals. Yet her poem, "To My Country"
written in the twenties, was the perfect example of the way women viewed their
role in the literary world. The poem
begins:
I
didn't sing of thee, my country,
Nor
laud thy name
With
acts of heroism
In
myriads of battles!
Only
a tree ‑ my hands planted
On
the quiet
Only
a path ‑ my feet wore
to
the fields. (2)
and
continues with an apology for the poverty of her gift of poems to her
motherland. Her poetry constitutes only
a partial involvement in the country, only a poor substitute for the complete
involvement from which she was excluded as a woman.
The poems of "Rachel", as she is
known, were concerned with the individual in a spiritual environment ‑
relating to the land of her dreams, and her dreams within that land. "To My Country" and other poems by
her have been set to music, and are played regularly on the radio, as are the
poems of the freedom fighter, Hana Senesh.
Best known by Senesh is the following:
WALKING
TO
My
God, My God
May
it never end:
The
sand and the sea
Whisper
of water
The
flash of sky
The
prayers of man.
Senesh,
who was captured when she parachuted into enemy territory during World War II,
tortured, and killed, emphasizes the hope for a more spiritual world and a
better future. In 1940 she wrote
"In the Fires of War" in which she searches the battlefield with her
flashlight for a human face. And in
other poems she emphasizes the power of the individual to institute major
changes in the world. "Blessed Be
the Match" praises the "match" which though extinguished ignites
a flame in the hearts of mankind and extolls the honorable hearts that knew
when self sacrifice is necessary.
This voice from the dead affirming the
value of life and the necessity for involvement in it has been a consolation for
many, and the poems of Hana Senesh, although poetically considered less than
significant, remain standard fare for memorial days and other public
occasions. And the affirmation of the
significance of life has continued to be a major subject for women. Zelda Mishovsky's (1914‑1984)
"Each Man Has a Name", a long list of the characteristics that
individualize each human being, is a poem particularly valuable in a time of
military crisis.
Each
man has a name
given
him by God
and
by his father and mother
each
man has a name
given
him by his stature and his smile
and
given him by his clothes
each
man has a name
given
him by the hills
and
given him by his walls
each
man has a name
given
him by his fate
and
given him by his friends
each
man has a name
given
him by his sins
and
given him by his yearnings
each
man has a name
given
him by his enemies
and
given him by his love
each
man has a name
given
him by his celebrations
and
given him by his work
each
man has a name
given
him by the seasons
and
given him by his blindness
each
man has a name
given
him by the sea
and
given him
by
his death. (3)
Because
this poem emphasizes, in a way perhaps never intended, the value of significant
death, it is read often at military funeral services and the effect of poems
like this one ‑ read over the grave of an 18 year old soldier ‑ on
a constantly grief stricken society, cannot be underestimated.
Whatever their roles were in real life,
in poetry the role of women in war was initially to support, to comfort, and to
inspire.
An important aspect of this affirmation
of the significance of existence and the necessity for individual efforts to
enable social change has been an optimism about future peace. War was only a temporary situation, and there
was always anticipation of better times.
Speaking to a woman, Leah Goldberg (1911‑1970) wrote during the
war in 1948: "You will go in the field.
Alone. Unscorched by the heat of
fires/ On roads that once bristled with horror and blood./ And with integrity
you will be once again humble and acquiescent/ As of the grasses, as one of
mankind." (4) The suggestion here
is not only that war, but the heroic role ‑ even of woman ‑ was
only temporary, and that the role of woman would revert back to its natural
"humble and acquiescent" position once peace could be achieved.
Because the military situation seemed
more quiet in the late fifties and early sixties, poetry in
And
that night I was a mechanical doll
and
I turned right and left, to all sides
and
I fell on my face and broke to bits,
and
they tried to put me together with skillful hands
And
then I went back to being a correct doll
and
all my manners were studied and compliant.
But
by then I was a different kind of doll
like
a wounded twig hanging by a tendril.
And
then I went to dance at a ball,
but
they left me in the company of cats and dogs
even
though all my steps were measured and patterned.
And
I had golden hair and I had blue eyes
and
I had a dress the color of the flowers in the garden
and
I had a straw hat decorated with a cherry.
The
message in this poem ‑ of the necessity for a public facade, the
inability of the sensitive person to function in an uncaring, unreal society,
the irrelevance and even danger of the real individual to society ‑
struck a note of recognition in many readers, as did poems like "Time Caught
in a Net" in which the narrator describes herself as "one of those
little girls/ who sail around the whole world in one night/ and come to the
land of Cathay/and Madagascar,//and who smash plates and cups/ from so much
love,/so much love,/so much love. (5)
This image of the passive‑aggressive woman caught in a double‑bind
was so similar to that of the American woman of this period that there are
times when the poetry of Ravikovitch and Anne Sexton or Sylvia Plath seem
almost interchangeable.
The fact that there were so few
differences between the self perceptions of American and Israeli women would
not have been surprising had Ravikovitch been living on a peaceful street in
the suburbs of Boston somewhere, or Devon, but Israel was only temporarily at
rest ‑ in the eye of the storm.
The Six Day War of 1967 was followed by the surprise attack on all its
many borders on Yom Kippur of 1973.
No one was more than a few miles from
any of these borders; war in
Dahlia Ravikovitch and Yona Wollach
(1945‑1986) dominated the women poets of this generation. Living in antithetical situations, these two
very different women may be parallelled with Plath and Sexton: Ravikovich
controlled, intellectual, and interested in children, and Wollach flamboyant,
self involved, hungering aloud for love.
For Wollach, the military situation was reflected only in her choice of
language in discussing her own situations.
The terms of war, of contemporary religious and political conflicts,
were employed as metaphors for personal relationships, and "Feelings"
is a typical example:
Our
feelings are hostages ‑
We
exchange them
With
each other
Mine
for yours
Yours
for mine
We
give and take
What
for what
Two
hostages
For
your love
Two
hostages
For
a kiss
Ten
hostages
For
your honesty
A
plot of land
For
your last thought
A
jet plane
For
silence
Release
from follow‑up
For
your laughter
A
bundle of money
For
understanding (6)
While
there is here, as in other poems of Wollach, a clear causal relationship
between the failure of individual relationships and the principles of
communication embedded in the military uncertainty, the concern is with the
couple, and not the society.
Why was there so little overt concern
by women poets with the war that has constantly been threatening the existence
of
There were other reasons for silence
than lack of the authority of military involvement. How could one discuss a war in which one's
family was actively engaged? The
possibility of endangering the life or the morale of a loved one was too
great. For women who stand on the
sidelines to suggest to their men that the battle they was fighting had better
not be fought was to increase the chances that they would be killed. The role of the woman in society was one of
unquestioning support, and consequently the potentially significant voice in
poetry was also silenced.
The political female poet who
maintained popular recognition during this time and remained popular through
the Begin administration was the lyricist Nomi Shemer, whose gentle militarism
was in line with the establish concept of a woman's role and the accepted
politics of the government. In one of
her most popular songs, "On the Honey and the Thorn," she warns that
God combines the bitter (defense) with the sweet (peace) for the sake of
"our baby daughter." The
acceptibility of Shemer is clearly linked to her fulfillment of perceived roles
and attitudes.
The general political consensus until
the election of Menachem Begin in 1977 helped contribute to the relative
military silence of women. Women felt no
need to interfere in a situation about which there seemed to be almost no
alternative and the men in charge appeared to be handling competently. There was no discussion of the basic issue of
war in the poetry by men either. But
with the dissolution of a general consensus and the rise of a more militaristic
party which seemed to encourage obvious prevarication both to government
leaders and the public, general discussion became necessary.
The situation became extreme when the
war in
My own situation was illustrative. Two months before
TO
ONE IN
Not a day
goes by without my thinking of you . . .
as
in a clandestine affair I am reminded
by
the newspapers, the sounds in the air,
that
you are there, and I in Tel Aviv.
Today
brings a letter, postmarked
sent
through Jounieh to Larnaca on its way here.
You
are well, as of
and
today is the 30th. Last night
on
the news, we were still pounding the city.
As
long as we kept from politics, we were friends
strolling
together down the sea road in an Austrian town,
shocking
the guide with our nationalities
and
talking Pound, sex, divorce, food, wine.
How
our lives would be fine
now,
if that was all there was
to
talk of. But where we live
we
speak only of death and think
of
somewhere else.
The
helplessness of the individual in a political situation was part of the
issue. The other part could be seen in
"Friend and Foe", written a few days earlier.
Skyhawks
fly over my city
on
their way to bomb yours.
We
are awakened by the noise
and
I fall asleep restlessly
dreaming
of you and your daughters.
My
Lebanese friend had reminded me that "If anything happens to my girls,/I
hold you personally responsible." and in the poem I found myself
answering:
Friend!
My husband is in civil defense
and
my sons are too small for the army. You
have
daughters and are old and alcoholic.
We
can't fight this war.
But
both of us are in it
and
responsible. (8)
Responsibility was a central
issue. Not only was this war the first
considered avoidable and non‑defensive, it was the only war in which
decisions concerning its progress continued to be made for an extended period
of time. The military action ‑
although initially perceived as defensive (to stop the katushas, fired from PLO
bases in
I was not the only one. An unprecedented movement, "Mothers
Against Silence," urging the government to consider the significance of
the lives of their sons in their political and military decisions, was a major
sign that something had changed in the attitude of women to war. Simultaneously, political poems by women
began to appear in literary journals and newspapers. Riva Rubin, who had come to
Rubin's poetry traced a growing
aggressiveness in her personality that was reinforced by her maternal
concerns. Some reflect the defensive
maternal instinct. Just before the war,
she protested the endangered situation of children living in border towns.
Night
Fears
Boogeyman,
Goblin,
Sandman,
Troll,
Babayaga
Tokolosh
KATYUSHA
(9)
The
Katyusha rockets had become incorporated into the terrors of childhood, but
these fears ‑ random and faceless as any fairy tale monster ‑ were
real. And yet the alternatives were equally terrifying: It was against these
rockets that her sons were being sent to fight.
And in fighting the nightmares of children they too had entered the
world of nightmare, where the concepts of villian and hero were often
interchangeable.
Hero
Let
me sing a song of love on this mountain peak till they find me
(The
colours of thousands
of
universes imploding
to
softness) blackly
Black
(my throat my lips)
burned
away
(Silver
the
cold) fills me
black
(the stars soft
their
tips) black
as
my stagnant tears
(I
warm myself)
on
the cooling turret (clinging)
with
my charred arms
I
will require large points of reference now my vision is shattered
But it was on the more popular level
that poetry by women really struck home.
At a demonstration outside the Parliament building, one of the organizers
read the following poem by "an anonymous mother":
Being
the mother of a soldier in
Is
to tremble each time you hear the helicopter's roar,
And
to jump each time the phone rings,
and
to freeze with shock at each knock on the door.
Our
boys do not complain: only their eyes speak. . .
their
bodies are not tired, and they have strength,
But
in their hearts there are questions and their souls know no rest.
Forgive
us, our sons, that, this once,
We
presume to break our silence and shout aloud. (10)
The
silence was broken ‑ despite the fears of the danger of speaking out ‑
and the reasons were not based on the misgivings about physical danger, not
only maternal fears and needs for protection, but the moral justification of
this risk.
The moral crisis came when the
Christian Lebanese Army massacred women and children in the Palestinian camps
of Sabra and Shattila, and Israeli soldiers, guarding the camps, refrained from
intervention. The Israeli public was
outraged, not only because of the terrible murder of women and children, but
also because of the morally equivocal position of the soldiers. Dahlia Ravikovitch published two poems in the
most popular literary journal, Moznaim.
Both of these poems take their stands on the war on the basis of the
simple humanity she felt was being lost in the rhetoric of politicians. "A
Baby Can't be Killed Twice", for example, pairs the young Israeli soldiers
with the children they didn't allow to escape from the massacre.
"Back
to camp, march!" the soldier ordered
the
shrieking women of Sabra and Shatila.
He
had his orders to fulfill.
And
the children were already lying in the puddles of sewage,
mouths
gaping,
calm.
No
one will hurt them.
A
baby can't be killed twice.
.. . . . .
Our
sweet soldiers ‑
they
asked nothing for themselves.
How
strong their wish
to
come home in peace. (11)
The
effect of Ravikovitch's subsequent public appearances at anti‑war rallies,
where she was interviewed for the evening news and quoted in the daily papers,
can only begin to be measured if one imagines Sylvia Plath at a sit‑in. If someone who has been the emblem of self‑involvement
could now conceive it her duty to protest the war, who could remain
silent?
These poets were widely discussed,
their poetry published in newspapers and newstand magazines, and debated in
panels at the university. They have been
anthologized, published in book form, and ‑ most significantly ‑
read and discussed.
Other voices also began to be heard,
some more stridently than others, all of them ‑ in a country that thrives
on controversy ‑ welcomed by magazines, weekly literary supplements of
daily newspapers and feminist journals.
Maya Bejerano, whose intellectual poetry, influenced by Eliot and
Stevens, has been concerned with the role of women, took on the subjects of
Child's
play makes it possible to understand the "Good Fence."
The
high railing is the good fence to children on the balcony
Who
know that it is possible to fly off it, and do not fly,
See
the distance and covet it,
For
hours look through its bars as their desire grows. (12)
The direct political involvement of
Shelley Elkayyam led her to help form an international peace movement, entitled
"East For Peace." Elkayyam's
primary goal, "the integration of
Although the war in
Your
socks in the drawer
the
clothes folded in the closet
your
fatigues, too,
and
your watch ticks on my hand
wakes
me in vain every morning
at
precisely
Where
were you rushing to at
to
what destruction to what end
at
what
were you rushing for where was the fire. . .
And
your clothes in the closet
the
dress uniform, the fatigues,
the
ranked army jacket next to the curtain.
And
the watch that wakes me in the night
at
Harnick,
who lost her son ‑ an officer active in the peace movement ‑ early
in the war of 1982, affirms the interconnectedness of all generations of
Israelis in the fate of those who fight in this and other poems such as
"And At Night":
And
at night he came to me
the
unborn boy
and
looked into my eyes
and
asked:
Where
is my father?
His
eyes were
your
eyes, my son. And the slant
of
his brows were yours
and
mine, and the boy asked:
Where
is my father?
Your
father, my son, was swept up
in
the spirit of the mountain. He remained
in
a strange land, my son.
Someone
made a mistake my beautiful boy
and
now you will not be.
Where
is my father he asks,
the
unborn boy.
Where
is my son she asks
the
mother who no longer lives.
Where
I ask the man
who
remained on the crest of the mountain.
(15)
The
effect of war was not isolated, bad only for those who fought, but destroyed
generations to come. The biblical
concept of the "sins of the fathers visited on the sons" becomes even
more poignant when it is the death of the father and the absence of "sons."
"Behind the Lines ," by
Yehudit Cafri, gives the same sense of loss and interconnectedness, to the
extent that a woman, made mad by society, is irrevocably effected by events.
Lately
she
has come to live there.
She
stays in that forest
almost
all the time;
going
barefoot and uncombed
conversing
with the reeds
and
watching the ants.
I
would always tempt her
to
come back to us, at least at night
or
when she was cold
or
when she was afraid.
But
now I can't succeed.
She
looks at me
with
hostile gaze
and
retreats into her shadow castle
becomes
freckles of light and shadow.
No
she doesn't want to come back.
Sometimes
she sits for hours
and
waits
for
the birds to begin to speak with her
for
the ants to move forward
with
their burden of seeds and pits.
Sometimes
she throws nervous glances
to
the place where the road enters the forest
as
if after all
she
still waited for some
someone
who
was once there
with
her
and
me
and
disappeared
when
the war began. (16)
"Behind
the Lines" is, it will be remembered, the "proper" place for
women during war. Here it has become the
only proper moral position to choose. In
writing the poem, however, Cafri is taking a more extreme position than the
woman in the poem, by refusing to wait passively behind the lines, and
attacking their very existence. And
indeed this seems to be the major change in the poetry of women about the war
in
It has been often suggested that
Menachem Begin's retirement, his subsequent seclusion from politics and
personal depression, was to some extent caused by the resistance of women to
the war. "Mothers Against
Silence," many reporters agree, broke down the singleness of vision of the
former Prime Minister. If women, who had
traditionally waited in silence, allowing their men the decisions, were now
vocal in their disagreement, something serious had happened.
Clearly the stereotype of the
"Moral Mother" cannot be the only viewpoint from which to deal with
military issues. (17) But it was society's respect for this stereotype that was
so effective. And from this voice,
other female voices have begun to be heard.
The involvement of women poets in military issues does not appear to be
diminishing with the withdrawal of Israeli troops. The issue of combat in the army has been
reopened and women have now been offered far more authoritative positions in
the army than in previous years. Since
the army is often a stepping stone to civilian positions of authority, this
change is not minor.
In numerous other ways the influence of
this recent war is still felt: In a
recent popular anthology of love poetry by women which listed responses to a
questionnaire about subjects such as love and society, a number of women poets
stated blankly their opposition to the war and the necessity of peaceful
alternatives. Cafri shifted the
questions of love, and society, and responded to "love of
society": "War is the
destruction of life. The solution of
power means the recurrence of war. . .There are no solutions in power, but only
destruction and death. . . .It is necessary to find a true solution through
discussion. . .'Let respect for others, their intentions and rights for life
and liberty, be as pleasant to me as my own.'" (18) When
one considers the usual expectations for a volume of love poetry, the military
concerns of the poets are quite remarkable.
Peace remains a distant goal in the
I
After
dinner with the grandmother ‑
young
wives of the household
feed
the children and serve dessert to the men.
I
am a guest, an English teacher new
to
the
even
the basic Arabic most Israelis know
and
I cannot play in pantomine ‑
like
my daughter ‑ with the children and the goats.
I
am in a bare room
with
an old woman who talks
as
if eventually I must understand
her
native tongue
Because
we are women.
II
When
I cannot answer, even after her long
probing
looks, she shrugs,
takes
her crochet hook from a pocket,
and
points out the window where a girl
plays
alone.
Her
gnarled hands, wound with pink wool, move easily,
and
soon she is making lovely rosettes in the bodice.
I
take the hook and try to imitate, slip,
slip
again, finally latch through the last eye
to
pull the rose together. She smiles,
I
show her a stitch of my own
which
she examines,
unravels,
then duplicates
with
a flourish. (19)
NOTES
Special thanks to
Lily Ratok, whose book on Women Poets in Israel, the first on this subject,
will appear in 1987 (Tel Aviv: Zmora Bitan Modan). Thanks also to Lisa Fliegel.
1. from From Morning to Morning (Kibbutz
Hameuchad, 1953). Gilboa was born in
1917 and died in 1986. Except where
otherwise indicated, the translation in these texts were made by the author of
the article.
2. Shirat Rachel (Tel Aviv: Davar,
1949). The use of the first name only
for women poets has diminished in popularity, but "Rachel,"
"Zelda," and "Assia" came from a primarily Russian
background and found this form acceptable.
3. Although Zelda's poems were written later
because she began at a later age and outlived her contemporaries, she is still
mentally part of the previous generation.
Since the collective word for person is
"man" in Hebrew, the sexual bias is more or less built in. Of this, and its effect on poetry by women,
much more needs to be said that space and subject here allow. Suffice it to note here that although the
significance of all humanity is affirmed in this poem, there is no mention of the
distinction of sex as part of identity.
4. "Will It
Still Come?" Al HaPricha (Tel Aviv: Sifriyat HaPoalim, 1948).
5. A Dress of Fire, translated by Chana
Bloch (N.Y: Sheep Meadow Press, 1978).
The translation of "Mechanical Doll" is my own.
6. Home Planet News, May, 1986.
7. "On Memorial Day" and
"Aliyah" will appear in Lips ed. Laura Boss, (New York, 1989).
8. "Friend and Foe" first appeared in
Hebrew in Migvan, 72, August 1982, 35. "To One in
9. Arc (Tel Aviv, 1984).
10. Translated by Daniel Gavron, and quoted in
Gavron's
11. January, 1983, Vol. 2.
12. from Hatzayat Gvul (Crossing the
Border, An Anthology of Poetry about the War in
13. Sephardi World, Jan 1984, No. 1.
14. Simple Days trans. Charles McGeehan
with Hans Buller (Amsterdam: Boaz, 1984).
15. Hatzayat Gvul.
16. Ibid.
17. For a discussion of the issue of the "Moral
Mother," see Micaela di Leonardo, "Morals, Mothers, and Militarism:
Antimilitarism and Feminist Theory,"
Feminist Studies 11, 3 (Fall, 1985).
18. Isha Ohevet (Tel Aviv, Stavit, 1985).
19. Karen Alkalay‑Gut, Response, XV,
#3, Spring, 1987, 66‑8.
POETRY BY WOMEN
IN
Karen Alkalay‑Gut
A SELECTION OF
POEMS FOR LITERARY EVENINGS TO ACCOMPANY THE ARTICLE
Except where
otherwise indicated, the translations in these texts were made by the speaker,
are copyrighted, and may not be reproduced without permission.
AMIR GILBOA
ISAAC
In the morning
the sun strolled in the woods
with me and
father,
my right hand in
his left.
A knife flashed
from between the trees like lightning.
and I shrink from
my eyes' terror before the blooded leaves.
Father, father,
come rush to save Isaac
so no one will be
missing from the meal at
It is I who am
slaughtered, my son.
Already my blood
is on the leaves.
And father's
voice was stilled,
his face pale
I wanted to
scream, writhing against belief
and tearing open
my eyes
I awoke.
And my right hand
was drained of blood.
from From
Morning to Morning (Kibbutz Hameuchad, 1953).
*************************
RACHEL
TO MY
COUNTRY
I didn't sing of
thee, my country,
Nor laud thy name
With acts of
heroism
In myriads of
battles!
Only a tree ‑
my hands planted
On the quiet
Only a path ‑
my feet wore
to the
fields.
First verse only
is reproduced here. From Shirat
Rachel (Tel Aviv: Davar, 1949).
*********************
HANNA SENESH
WALKING TO
My God, My God
May it never end:
The sand and the
sea
Whisper of water
The flash of sky
The prayers of
man.
************************
ZELDA
EACH MAN HAS A
NAME
Each man has a
name
given him by God
and by his father
and mother
each man has a
name
given him by his
stature and his smile
and given him by
his clothes
each man has a
name
given him by the
hills
and given him by
his walls
each man has a
name
given him by his
fate
and given him by
his friends
each man has a
name
given him by his
sins
and given him by
his yearnings
each man has a
name
given him by his
enemies
and given him by
his love
each man has a
name
given him by his
celebrations
and given him by
his work
each man has a
name
given him by the
seasons
and given him by
his blindness
each man has a
name
given him by the
sea
and given him
by his death.
Since the collective word for person is
"man" in Hebrew, the sexual bias is more or less built in. Of this, and its effect on poetry by women,
much more needs to be said that space and subject here allow. Suffice it to note here that although the
significance of all humanity is affirmed in this poem, there is no mention of
the distinction of gender as part of identity.
********************
DAHLIA RAVIKOVICH
MECHANICAL DOLL
And that night I
was a mechanical doll
and I turned
right and left, to all sides
and I fell on my
face and broke to bits,
and they tried to
put me together with skillful hands
And then I went
back to being a correct doll
and all my
manners were studied and compliant.
But by then I was
a different kind of doll
like a wounded
twig hanging by a tendril.
And then I went
to dance at a ball,
but they left me
in the company of cats and dogs
even though all
my steps were measured and patterned.
And I had golden
hair and I had blue eyes
and I had a dress
the color of the flowers in the garden
and I had a straw
hat decorated with a cherry.
*****************************
YONA WOLLACH
FEELINGS
Our feelings are
hostages ‑
We exchange them
With each other
Mine for yours
Yours for mine
We give and take
What for what
Two hostages
For your love
Two hostages
For a kiss
Ten hostages
For your honesty
A plot of land
For your last
thought
A jet plane
For silence
Release from
follow‑up
For your laughter
A bundle of money
For
understanding
The translation
was first published in XHome Planet NewsY, May, 1986.
*************************************
KAREN ALKALAY‑GUT
TO ONE IN
Not a day goes by
without my thinking of you . . .
as in a
clandestine affair I am reminded
by the
newspapers, the sounds in the air,
that you are
there, and I in Tel Aviv.
Today brings a
letter, postmarked
sent through
Jounieh to Larnaca on its way here.
You are well, as
of
and today is the
30th. Last night
on the news, we
were still pounding the city.
As long as we
kept from politics, we were friends
strolling
together down the sea road in an Austrian town,
shocking the
guide with our nationalities
and talking
Pound, sex, divorce, food, wine.
How our lives
would be fine
now, if that was
all there was
to talk of. But where we live
we speak only of
death and think
of somewhere
else.
****************************
RIVA RUBIN
NIGHT FEARS
Boogeyman,
Goblin,
Sandman, Troll,
Babayaga
Tokolosh
KATYUSHA
from Arc (Tel Aviv, 1984)
***************************
RIVA RUBIN
HERO
Let me sing a song
of love on this mountain peak till they find me
(The colours of
thousands
of universes
imploding
to softness)
blackly
Black (my throat
my lips)
burned away
(Silver
the cold) fills
me
black (the stars
soft
their tips) black
as my stagnant
tears
(I warm myself)
on the cooling
turret (clinging)
with my charred
arms
I will require
large points of reference now my vision is shattered
***********************************
"an
anonymous mother"
Being the mother of
a soldier in
Is to tremble
each time you hear the helicopter's roar,
And to jump each
time the phone rings,
and to freeze
with shock at each knock on the door.
Our boys do not
complain: only their eyes speak. . .
their bodies are
not tired, and they have strength,
But in their
hearts there are questions and their souls know no rest.
Forgive us, our
sons, that, this once,
We presume to
break our silence and shout aloud. (10)
Translated by
Daniel Gavron, and quoted in Gavron's
*************************
MAYA BEJERANO
Child's play
makes it possible to understand the "Good Fence."
The high railing
is the good fence to children on the balcony
Who know that it
is possible to fly off it, and do not fly,
See the distance
and covet it,
For hours look
through its bars as their desire grows. (12)
from Hatzayat
Gvul (Crossing the Border, An Anthology of Poetry about the War in
************************
RAYA HARNICK
YOUR SOCKS
Your socks in the
drawer
the clothes
folded in the closet
your fatigues,
too,
and your watch
ticks on my hand
wakes me in vain
every morning
at precisely
Where were you
rushing to at
to what
destruction to what end
at
what were you
rushing for where was the fire. . .
And your clothes
in the closet
the dress
uniform, the fatigues,
the ranked army
jacket next to the curtain.
And the watch
that wakes me in the night
at
********************
RAYA HARNICK
AND AT NIGHT
And at night he
came to me
the unborn
boy
and looked into
my eyes
and asked:
Where is my
father?
His eyes
were
your eyes, my
son. And the slant
of his brows were
yours
and mine, and the
boy asked:
Where is my
father?
Your father, my
son, was swept up
in the spirit of
the mountain. He remained
in a strange
land, my son.
Someone made a
mistake my beautiful boy
and now you will
not be.
Where is my
father he asks,
the unborn boy.
Where is my son
she asks
the mother who no
longer lives.
Where I ask the
man
who remained on
the crest of the mountain.
Hatzayat Gvul
**************************
YEHUDIT
CAFRI
BEHIND THE
LINES
Lately
she has come to
live there.
She stays in that
forest
almost all the
time;
going barefoot
and uncombed
conversing with
the reeds
and watching the
ants.
I would always
tempt her
to come back to
us, at least at night
or when she was
cold
or when she was
afraid.
But now I can't
succeed.
She looks at me
with hostile gaze
and retreats into
her shadow castle
becomes freckles
of light and shadow.
No she doesn't
want to come back.
Sometimes she
sits for hours
and waits
for the birds to
begin to speak with her
for the ants to
move forward
with their burden
of seeds and pits.
Sometimes she
throws nervous glances
to the place
where the road enters the forest
as if after all
she still waited
for some
someone
who was once
there
with her
and me
and disappeared
when the war
began.
***********************
DAHLIA RAVIKOVICH
GET OUT OF
Take the
knapsacks
and the utensils
and washtubs
and the books of
the Koran
and the army
fatigues
and the tall
tales and the torn soul
and whatever's
left, bread or meat,
and kids running
around like chickens in the village.
How many children
do you have?
How many children
did you have?
It's hard to keep
tabs on kids in a situation like this.
Not like in the
old country
in the shade of
the mosque and the fig tree,
when the children
the children would be shooed outside by day
and put to bed at
night.
Put whatever
isn't fragile into sacks,
clothes and
blankets and bedding and diapers
and something for
a souvenir
like a shiny
artillery shell perhaps,
or some kind of useful
tool,
and the babies
with rheumy eyes
and the R.P.G.
kids.
We want to see
you in the water, sailing aimlessly
with no harbor
and no shore.
You won't be
accepted anywhere
You are banished
human beings.
You are people
who don't count
You are people
who aren't needed
You are a pinch
of lice
stinging and
itching
to madness.
**************************
DAHLIA RAVIKOVICH
A BABY CAN'T BE
KILLED TWICE
On the sewage
puddles of Sabra and Shattila
there you
transferred masses of human beings
worthy of respect
from the world of
the living to the world of the dead.
Night after
night.
First they shot
then they hung
and finally
slaughtered with knives.
Terrified women
rushed up
from over the
dust hills:
"There they
slaughter us
in Shatilla"
A narrow tail of
the new moon hung
above the camps.
Our soldiers
illuminated the place with flares
like daylight.
"Back to the
camps, March!" the soldier commanded
the screaming
women of Sabra and shatilla.
He had orders to
follow,
And the children
were already laid in the puddles of waste,
their mouths
open,
at rest.
Noone will harm
them.
A baby can't be
killed twice.
And the tail of
the moon filled out
until it turned
into a loaf of whole gold.
Our dear sweet
soldiers,
asked nothing for
themselves ‑
how strong was
their hunger
to return home in
peace.