Moti and I were born in the spring.  He was a year younger than me, but both of us had an obsession about being an example of renewal.  He was an only child and gay so the “renewal” was in his poetry, his art, his writing.

I didn’t know about his passing – I’ve been out of touch with most of my friends for the past couple of years – even Moti.  I didn’t even know he’d been struggling with cancer while I myself had been testing positive for something similar that has largely disappeared in the past month.  

And I kept thinking that sometime soon I would speak to him about it, now that it was over – both of us being hypochondriacs.  A shelf of his books, at least 30 poems of his I translated, a vase he gave me a few years ago.  So here’s the first poem of his I translated.  I can’t remember where it was published but it was.

SPRING

I was conceived in the summer

when my parents fell in love between their quarrels,

and born in a spring of butterflies and rats

while clear rivers were melting

though Earth had digested innumerable dead.

In the windows the city was ruins:

Horrible sights crowded the streets

refusing to sink into memory sewers.

Satan has performed here, they said.

His barking voice echoed in empty stadiums,

his blood stained the sidewalks with hieroglyphics.

White‑toothed American soldiers were messengers of purity.

Hungry and yellow, German women coupled with muscular blacks.

The Jews of the Camps returned to business and regained flesh.

I was a newborn to the crucified race,

a race whose interpretations of its books

concealed the secret of its essence,

a race whose weaknesses implored its death

at the hands of the mad masters of power.

I was a newborn in a city of ruins

and my mother loved me like hope, like an omen, like blue skies,

and my father embraced me like a man embracing his new sword

and the wool and silk and milk did not suffice

to subdue my feverish cry.

1.

Butterflies and angels in leaves and flowers

floated, carousing and leaping,

and the bees buzzed, busy for hours,

among pollen rods and cones of nectar.  

2.

We sat at night by a shallow sea—

holding hands in silence.

And our hands sweltered, melted, welded

and in our breasts a heart was raving

and our heart pleaded to leap distances—

propelled on by vast craving—

we thought we longed for each other.

The sea smelled of iodine and weeds

the wind carried gentle seeds,

the wind circled in dreams.

Love dictated surrender and conquest,

brave gestures and soft accord.

3.

On beams burning like rainbow

tiny girls curled the air 

golden dust in their hair

holding lilies and moths

4.

Blue dolphins sported in the heights

with balls of cloud, large and light.

On earth they served creamy ice

to modish lips of strawberry and rose.

Craving ships sailed out to sea, to the heavens.

There invaded a glowing light,

yellow clusters, clusters of fire,

intoxicating odor of flowers’ desire,

blood period feverish like a childhood disease,

the white of her body, body of white.

5.

An old man licked the vision of boys and girls

at the number 5 stop, pierced 

with his tongue through their blue uniforms,

through their sneakers and socks.

Guilt was arrested and executed.

Ladies and gentlemen, 

said the old man at the trial of Guilt,

to live is to lick visions.

6.

Joseph and Zuki, the lovers, the addicts of their love,

took with them for a trip along the shores of Sinai—

me—guessing the severity of my verdict:

to search for love for many years 

perplexed between pilgrims’ paths

to the cities of love’s spoils

        the cities of grand parks, cafes, river‑bridges,

        the baths with wet mosaics, the opera foyer

or to the crystal‑built cities of spirit,

at the gate of the great being

that seems as nothingness to the private and lustful human.

Joseph and Zuki the lovers

took with them for a trip along the shores of Sinai

in the beginning of Spring, 1977,

a perplexed and grim pilgrim

inventing himself as if walking on himself

like a circus bear walking on a ball,

and before my eyes they planned their house

a grey concrete villa, paved with pink marble,

with a bed for a lemon tree in the patio,

spotted dogs wandering around.

Now when I ponder Spring

I remember again the journeys’ evenings:

the evening they disappeared to fulfill their passion

and left a bitter and dreamy pilgrim

in an empty cafe, in the last cafe before the desert

listening to taped American troubadours,

watching the bluing desert,

And the evening smuggled in, tender and blind.

And a black evening spraying stars

when we crouched in the sand by a greasy sea

(they held hands) 

and we saw the light net streams

that the moon spread out on the moving water

reaching Arabia, land of the rock,

and I pronounced quite relevant thoughts

on the influence of desert‑scape on the birth of monotheism

and on the influence of the sun on the consciousness of Abraham.

7.

Spring attacked, we became as loonies

our strength to die was dying

bush‑hunters turned blue for love

and monkeys and parrots screeched.

Spring attacked, we became as loonies

running out of strength to die

Spring attacked, we became as loonies

In the morning the sheets ain’t hiding  

the light vomits the awakened onto the streets

time seduces, warns