This is one of the poems he asked me to translate – years ago – but I don’t know what he did with it… he didn’t always tell me and didn’t always thanks me.
FINAL INTERVIEW
Prelude: This is an interview with a dying poet.
This is perhaps his ultimate word.
Yellow, feeble, and tormented,
he drowns in his pallid sick bed.
Q: What do you remember now?
A: Cities and studs.
Q: Which cities?
A: The cities within cities.
Cities from which cities were born
Cities in morning when all is waking.
Cities producing the dead for graves.
And the suburbs, leprous, scarred, stinking
suburbs that breed filth, whoring and sobbing –
nether cities, minor cities, pus cities
cities awaiting invaders from distant galaxies.
Q: And the studs?
A: The youths I could have been
youths I could have contained
youths I could have burned
the surf-boys returning barefoot
leathered and buckled motorcycle boys
dyed painted disco boys
yellow coated delivery boys
and Arab scaffold boys speckled with plaster.
Q: You sound gushy and gay.
A: It isn’t an election speech.
It’s a text that postpones the praise of girls
for different issues on different endings.
Q: And what do you remember now?
A: Parks.
Night parks with blinding lights
stage bushes, trees of light, artificial suns
shining grass stages for the lonely doubting rabbit
naive morning gardens sprayed by sprinklers
where a black man practices trumpet
and mothers adjust the swing’s movement, the dizziness of whirl,
interpreting childhood to their children
and mazes of greenery between palace and lake,
love corners, marble icons, ridiculed mythologies
and the tired gardeners in the shuddering shadows,
and arid gardens for spirit trees –
sand and stone gardens made by scalp-shaved monks –
bowers of sand around patterns of rock.
Q: And where from here?
A: A step garden with a thousand fountains
mazes of spouts and slivers of light
from mouths of demons, animals, heroes and goddesses –
a garden where the strollers converse in Italian.
Q: Are you hinting of the Tivoli Gardens?
A: No. Of the gardens within the Tivoli Gardens.
Q: And now?
A: Now I am fading.
A curtain rises before gilded balconies
and on stage lovers are dying
becoming a song for a final voice;
The soprano drowns in her heights
The tenor drowns in the balconies, the ceilings.
A woman as a perfect voice
A man as a symmetrical jet in the hall’s space.
Q: We’re back in Italy!
A: We’ll sail from Italy to Greece.
Marble statues in blinding brilliance
Apollo bathes in the light of mountains
lizards in shards of shining shrines
and the muses his only true love
conceive his children in the shade of groves.
Q: And some thing Israeli?
A: The Pieta Palestrina is coming.
Q: Nevertheless – some thing Israeli?
A: A spreading tree in white-hot Jerusalem
and in its shade a stone pallid and cool.
It is the stone for the wanderer of light,
It is the stone for summer rest.
Q: That’s it?
A: The valley of Beit Netufa in a blue haze
and the distant Kinneret among violet mountains
Q: Anything else?
A: The Essenes’ Caves near the Dead Sea.
FINAL INTERVIEW
Prelude: This is an interview with a dying poet.
This is perhaps his ultimate word.
Yellow, feeble, and tormented,
he drowns in his pallid sick bed.
Q: What do you remember now?
A: Cities and studs.
Q: Which cities?
A: The cities within cities.
Cities from which cities were born
Cities in morning when all is waking.
Cities producing the dead for graves.
And the suburbs, leprous, scarred, stinking
suburbs that breed filth, whoring and sobbing –
nether cities, minor cities, pus cities
cities awaiting invaders from distant galaxies.
Q: And the studs?
A: The youths I could have been
youths I could have contained
youths I could have burned
the surf-boys returning barefoot
leathered and buckled motorcycle boys
dyed painted disco boys
yellow coated delivery boys
and Arab scaffold boys speckled with plaster.
Q: You sound gushy and gay.
A: It isn’t an election speech.
It’s a text that postpones the praise of girls
for different issues on different endings.
Q: And what do you remember now?
A: Parks.
Night parks with blinding lights
stage bushes, trees of light, artificial suns
shining grass stages for the lonely doubting rabbit
naive morning gardens sprayed by sprinklers
where a black man practices trumpet
and mothers adjust the swing’s movement, the dizziness of whirl,
interpreting childhood to their children
and mazes of greenery between palace and lake,
love corners, marble icons, ridiculed mythologies
and the tired gardeners in the shuddering shadows,
and arid gardens for spirit trees –
sand and stone gardens made by scalp-shaved monks –
bowers of sand around patterns of rock.
Q: And where from here?
A: A step garden with a thousand fountains
mazes of spouts and slivers of light
from mouths of demons, animals, heroes and goddesses –
a garden where the strollers converse in Italian.
Q: Are you hinting of the Tivoli Gardens?
A: No. Of the gardens within the Tivoli Gardens.
Q: And now?
A: Now I am fading.
A curtain rises before gilded balconies
and on stage lovers are dying
becoming a song for a final voice;
The soprano drowns in her heights
The tenor drowns in the balconies, the ceilings.
A woman as a perfect voice
A man as a symmetrical jet in the hall’s space.
Q: We’re back in Italy!
A: We’ll sail from Italy to Greece.
Marble statues in blinding brilliance
Apollo bathes in the light of mountains
lizards in shards of shining shrines
and the muses his only true love
conceive his children in the shade of groves.
Q: And some thing Israeli?
A: The Pieta Palestrina is coming.
Q: Nevertheless – some thing Israeli?
A: A spreading tree in white-hot Jerusalem
and in its shade a stone pallid and cool.
It is the stone for the wanderer of light,
It is the stone for summer rest.
Q: That’s it?
A: The valley of Beit Netufa in a blue haze
and the distant Kinneret among violet mountains
Q: Anything else?
A: The Essenes’ Caves near the Dead Sea.i
Maybe he had no opportunity and maybe I wasn’t attractive enough for him… But I found him such a wonderful, brilliant man – with a great need to be loved. I’m not defending him, but I am separating what he might have done sexually from what he wanted to do to save the country, to save the world.