Yael Globerman
SELECTED POEMS
THE WOMAN
WHO DOVE TO THE SIRENS
From:
EVERYONE MUST OVERCOME HIS OWN BIOGRAPHY
Eulogy: The
Death of Passion..
What
lured her was the voice, high and piercing,
The
voice pitched for only dogs and men to hear,
From
eardrums to the loins and then
Sprayed!
Up to the dazzled brain.
What
lured her was that voice, legless,
That
swelled on the water promising a dark sweetness
Like crawling through the tunnel opening to a sugar igloo.
What
lured her was the longing that she was born
And
probably would die with, the possibility
To take
off to the deep, the chance
That a voice that high would take you that low.
For
years men have been sending her
their salty presents, pure protein,
Their
well constructed love, erected on citadels,
While
she stood there as if in a circle, un
touched, sending out good intentions,
Sending
out strong passions
That
just came back to her
Like the
sound waves returning to a bat
Who has
learned to see.
What
lured her was that sealed legged voice,
A shuttering,
sexless temptation
From
which there’s no return, its sex
The entire sea. What lured her was the chance
to suckle from that breast again at the age of thirty seven.
What
lured her was her mother’s voice.
Translated
by Karen Alkalay-Gut
She goes home again to close
the door behind
her body.
Night that broke in
bursts from the room
aiming a shiny
silence at her.
She know the black hose
it wears on its
face. Those
she picked up
from the carpet
in the hotel
room. They’re hers.
She stands in the doorway. The floor
sprawls before her.
Translated
by Karen Alkalay-Gut
This is the way
the fruit feels
when it devours the tongue
when it sucks the
knife’s metal
folding its flesh
around the hunger of
teeth
Stung with desire
it fills with
violent helplessness
exploding throughout
the moment’s
mouth
Translated
by Karen Alkalay-Gut
Her
condensed body, full to bursting,
Was
created by the shorthand of God:
All the
details are there, complete.
But the
grace of more than enough,
The wide
generous strokes creating beauty
For
beauty’s sake, the expanses
With no
real practical purpose, except that they transform
A place
to a landscape, are lacking.
She
sits, feeding herself conscientously,
With a
kind of patience: a hand
Raises a
fork carrying lettuce to the mouth
And lingers. The little hand and the large face:
Little girl feeding her mother.
A child
stares at her transfixed. For him
Even
upright on two legs
She’s a
tortoise thrown onto her back.
His
parents turn his eyes from her. Avert
Their bodies, their eyes. She has no hiding place.
She is a
parade of one woman.
Translated
by Karen Alkalay-Gut
On
Are
glued to the benches like bent candles,
Fading
away in the arms of Philippino girls,
Telling
them in Polish things
That they never told the kids.
In ten
years the cable train will pass through here.
Iron
rails will rest along the length of the avenue
Like a
row of walkers fallen to the new grass.
I walk
that broken line
Krakow-Tel
Aviv-
Two
blocks from here, my father
Is
silent amid pictures of my mother,
His
silence thickens like the glass of bottle
Corked by time. If it breaks, he breaks.
Something
stronger than longing grabs me,
Conducts
my feet to the wooden bench
As if
toward a ferry:
An old man speaking, a beautiful woman living.
I come
and sit between them like a child.
He
speaks. She looks at me.
I can
hear his story. I can smell her hair.
Three
strangers sit on a bench
As if in a station. The boulevard rushes past us
Leaving, as we do, without moving.
Distances
I once thought I would cross
Are now absolute. I have no chance to touch.
Translated
by Karen Alkalay-Gut
“Fire, Brothers, Fire”
H.N. Bialik,
“The Village is Burning”
The girl
thrown down on her back right now
Doesn’t
care what you call the thing that is happening to her:
Horror,
holocaust, the end of the world or rape
Reviewing
names that might fit this thing
That is
going on right now,
Stand
right there in the circle of laughing soldiers,
Cataloging horrors.
Fire, strangers, fire. The girl is burning.
Even if she does get up, like my mother
She‘ll
still be lying down for years.
In her
well-lit kitchen she will hold out to her son
Arms
covered with the scars
Of frying pans and suicide.
Translated
by Karen Alkalay-Gut
He is
the large intestine, exposed to the sun,
Of some
fragmented deity whose body was mutilated,
A
section of the digestive system of a primeval god
Who was
the prologue to the favorite son,
The one
who resembled him most, who rose to murder him:
A
severed organ, that retained an amazing vitality
For its
age; But with time,
The
absolute distance from the heart
Discarded
on some Olympic drain, some Vesuvius Extinctus
Takes its toll: The chill damages
him.
He is
still capable, full of potential,
But the
cold seeps through his veins
More and
more slowly,
Gradually
freezing the small, mean, desperate brain
That he
cunningly fashioned from a chronic ulcer.
Translated
by Karen Alkalay-Gut
Now you
know:
The body
is one thing and love is another.
Enclosed in metal scaffolding.
You go
out to the lighted street.
Insane,
this innocence
Of life
inside the body, counting on skin,
Stubbornly
clinging to limbs
That just keep breaking down,
Rotting
the way they will in the grave
Only
more slowly
My love,
the soul
Slows
the process
No more
Translated
by Karen Alkalay-Gut
To Anne Sexton, among others
In this
crazy house, the children
Play on
the carpet with honed pencils,
Lick
sweet dynamite sticks,
Wait at
the locked door behind which
She is
cooking a poem
A dog
called Machine
Chews on
the collar bone of her missing husband,
Watches
all entrances at once,
Stares
hungrily at the rib she saved
To work
on later, to make out of it
A help
mate
Why
doesn’t she ever get to where she wants to go.
She
walks to the window for comfort:
Look up
at the sky, even God
Made
rough drafts, this cloud, for instance
Is
definitely unfinished
Two
thousand twenty books on the shelves,
Six are
hers. The walls are swollen with paper,
Any
hunger could huff and puff
And blow
them away
On the
night table,
By her bed.
A
goddess figurine kneels
At the
foot of the telephone shrine
Come, sit by her on the gorgeous sofa.
She will
leaf with you
Through
her family album,
Full of frescoes.
Translated
by Karen Alkalay-Gut
You come
at night
Making
the long passage up my legs
Climbing as if upon an earlier woman,
The one
that came before the very first wife;
Had she
stayed with you, you swear,
You’d
still be deep in paradise.
I am not
bone of your bone, am formed
From the
snake, the apple,
Not your
simple rib, gently calcified by time,
Leaning against the wall of home,
anchored in the armchair.
My
thighs are scissors shredding
Another
woman’s life and with the same stroke
Cutting me off from the quiet in the room.
I choose
to harm her. Every lover is Lilith.
Then I’m
alone again. My son’s faint weeping
Passes
softly in a dream
Like a
rickshaw filled with milk.
I wake
to total silence.
Who is
that woman, lying in her clothes
Very
close to the wall
In the street of a double bed.
In every
triangle there is one rib
Jutting
out, cutting the lungs
While
the other two pant.
Excuses
fall from the naked body.
Translated
by Karen Alkalay-Gut
I.
Now, in
this light, I can see:
Two enormous parents inflating on the couch.
The
crown is cast into a corner, nothing more than a toy.
Is it
truth or a poem?
How
memory extends beyond itself,
Like the
tree passes its own fingertips through leaves.
Like the
mouth that says
Maybe
this way I can get there.
Translated
by Karen Alkalay-Gut
II.
The room is a large lampshade, softly lit
And at its heart you shine, the 1000
watt lightbulb of my childhood
Your
glass skin, heating to the touch of my eyes
Is
a bell, and inside it my pen once again moves
wildly
Like the bell's tongue, like the tongue of
an ancient mourner,
Like
a firefly larva inside
a pear
Translated
by Jack Adalist
III. To The Mother
You were never Demeter, lost girl
The darkness that abducted you, at thirteen
You emerged from only in part
And even though I saw you awash in light,
Bathed in love,
You were never Demeter
I am Persephone daughter of Persephone, child
born of child,
Standing as you stood then, on the other side
Of a door fusing shut like a hole in the ground
Crying out, just as you did,
Who have you taken, Hades?
Here I am, fresh and young
This is the way we sing, mother
This is the way we love
Above and below
Two seasons under the sun
And two seasons in hell
Translated by Jack Adalist
VI. To a Lover
Yes, he survived, but she was a wreck.
Her embrace enfolded us both like fish in
an inside-out net
Leaving the world shining outside, alternately flashing promises
And threats, like seasons changing.
Her lips had the taste
of sleeping pills:
Bitter and sweet. It took me years to
decipher that taste.
I found it once again, for a moment
snatched,
Don’t give up on me if I hug you with a hand
across my lips,
Don’t look at me like that
When I tear at the things that move us
Flailing against them as if against a trawler’s
net.
For me, my love,
To be enwrapped is to be kidnapped.
Translated by Jack Adalist
Yael Globerman
Who hold
the doll to their ear
And
nurse a baby. They too write poems,
But with one hand. You, on the other hand:
A door in darkness. Behind it
Darkness. Inside
You sit
in a paper armchair.
A moat
of black water surrounds the house
Chiseled in hard silence.
A narrow
hallway leads to the room where sleeping is done.
The bed
is a stump, trunk of severed tree.
On the
refrigerator - a note: Call Ana.
Need to
buy apples.
Do not
show the gallows to the guests.
Something
weighs heavy on the stone table.
Something
untangles the fingers, unties them from the hand.
You pass
through the rooms, checking escape routes
Like a
fireman: grapes in the fridge,
Push
buttons on the telephone,
The
dog’s pupils,
Little
scaffolds in the medicine cabinet.
Electricity
flows through walls. Blood flows through wrists.
A
spider-web shelf, for holding
The
books you will write.
Translated by Jack Adalist
A hungry
woman is a frightening thing.
She
feeds no one, she is looking for something to eat.
She
seems to be hunting. Every morsel that she isn’t sharing
Smack in
the center of her breast. Watch her drag home
A live
lobster, coins, a daffodil bulb, a map of
The apple, to pierce with a knife.
An empty
handed woman is a threatening thing.
If there
is no hand in her hand
Wind
gushes out of her as if from a ravine
A strange, hot weather menace, the bad breath of a dragon.
She is a house in the desert with its doors
ripped off the hinges,
Sand drifts freely through the rooms, piles up
on the kitchen counter,
On the floors, turns the bed into a dune.
A woman
alone scatters throughout her house empty cups
And cigarette butts, imprinted with lipstick marks.
There
will always be those who will see
Duplicated ten times over, evidence
Of
secret neglect, the exposed edges of a
great need.
Beware little girls, sitting among dolls
As if among open beaks, handing out the
tea:
Don’t become
like her.
Translated
by Jack Adalist
The
body, so quickly
Lost its memory.
If
not now
Then not at all.
Your
hands passed over my body, molding it
To the shape of passion.
Now
It
is damp fog, darkness
In a cellar.
Memory
fills with a face
Like
a hollow in the sand
Very
close to the water.
There,
the sea.
Here,
a hole dug with ten fingers.
This
body is an echo in a place where then
Our
voices roared.
Let
me go back to the deep room
Where we found shelter once.
Translated by Jack Adalist
God's amazing success
When He made the Word into flesh!
And then this thing
that you pursue:
To break that flesh
And all things
past
Into flashes, short lines
To go back and bring
forth
The word
Like a boy who dismantles
the
piano
So he can have a wooden stick
To bang on the fence with
And sing
Translated by Vivian Eden