what a way to escape the news. what a way to run away from the prospect of the world falling apart.
But the most overwhelming sensory experience was the overwhelming aroma of the Rotem. As Natan Yonatan once wrote. I remember translating this poem with him, and feeling the pain of beauty of which he spoke here
And the rotem would whiten slowly along the way
Tel Aviv wrapped in mist, Jerusalem far off
Someone may not get to the end of this winter, to nowhere.
Blood comes and blood goes and the earth abides forever.
Yesterday a beautiful photographer was shot in the heart.
She who desired the gold of dunes and the noble ascent
Of pelicans from the nature preserve of Ma’agan Michael,
How it chases away clouds in its flight and scatters
A flock of electric poles on its voyage to the winter
Holy‑feast in the slumbering fish pond.
This was not what I had intended from the start;
this draft was written
At the beginning of winter. The first buds of frost
broke out in the air.
The sea green of the rotem were blown waves on waves
In the shore wind.
I wanted to leave after me in these troubled times
A short confession of the love of rotem and the need
To write poems. I thought beauty could protect us
And the children from fire and ice
That delicate longing of the flower along the way
And the one land that remained
And sandy desert rotem and its awful beauty, I thought