Even though I used to sit with Natan Yonatan for hours and I translated many poems with him, I could never get this one right.  And I still can’t.   But now I understand what he was writing about.  Here, where the Hadera River meets the sea, the sand in summer is carried in by the waves and blocks the river, which flows sluggishly for lack of rain.  In the winter it would open up when the flow got stronger.  But now the sand is cleared and the river is more powerful and there is no more blockage.  This phenomenon was also true of the Yarkon river in Tel Aviv.  Ezi says that camels would cross the roadway between the river and the sea.  

anyway I am still not sure i’ve got the poem right.  Natan wanted me always to adjust the translation to the music, but that was impossible – since the accents in hebrew fall differently.

check it out here with Arik Einstein.