israeli politics

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.  

december 2, natan yonatan and sdot yam (continued) Read Post »

israeli politics

leaving Sdot Yam today, we came upon this sculpture – with chimes and a few lines of the poem written by Natan Yonatan in this place.  The poem, in my translation, is here:

SHORES ARE SOMETIMES

Shores are sometimes longings for a stream it loved.

I saw a  shore  once

Forsaken by the stream

With broken heart of stones and sand.

And a person too may

be left bereft and without strength

Just like the shore.

 

The sea shells too

Like shores or the spirit,

The shards are also sometimes longings

For a home we always loved

And only the sea

Sings its song alone.

 

Thus within the shards of one’s heart

Past youth sings out.

 

December 1, 2020 – Natan Yonatan and sdot yam Read Post »

israeli politics

Ezi spent a day making a Dobos torte for Oren’s birthday.  I was so hoping we’d get our whole family together to celebrate it, but we couldn’t seem to get our times together.  Maybe my madness is coming out – that i’m afraid of my own grandchildren, my own children, and wasn’t assertive enough about the times.    I’ve noticed my increasing paranoia, my fear of going out to Jaffa, my hunger for communication ameliorated by the occasional zoom.  All along, I thought I was as sane as could be expected.  Thank goodness we’re going on the Israel Trail tomorrow.  Even though it is really hard to hike with a mask, it’s still more sane to commune with nature…

never mind – we’ll still have a birthday party – and many more – this is a month of family birthdays, and we have to celebrate a few before the next shutdown.

november 30, 2020 – oren’s birthday Read Post »

blog, poetry,

When my late mother-in-law would travel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv in the 1920’s, she would set out with her family in the late afternoon, after the hot sun had begun to descend, so the horses would not get tired.  hear.  By the evening they would reach the inn at Shaar Ha’Gai, Bab El Wad, and sleep there.  Early in the morning they would begin the ascent to Jerusalem, where her grandparents lived (On Yaffo Road, in the building with the lions where the police station is now).   Last year we drove there (30 minutes from Tel Aviv) and found that the inn was undergoing renovations.  I didn’t think about the song, “Bab El Wad,” from the War of Independence and the battle for Jerusalem.  Bab El Wad was the gate to the city.

באב אל וואד,
לנצח זכור נא את שמותינו,
שיירות פרצו בדרך אל העיר.
בצידי הדרך מוטלים מתינו.

  שלד הברזל שותק כמוי רעי

Bab al Wad
remember our names forever
convoys broke through on the way to the city

Our dead lie on the roadsides
The iron skeleton is as silent as my mates.

Today the building has been commemorated as a national  memorial.  I forgot to mention that the poem “Bad El Wad” was written by Haim Guri, the poet of the Palmach generation.  I wonder what he would have thought of the opening ceremony – he would probably have loved the fact that history was being foregrounded but hated the fact that the right had co-opted history.

november 29, 2020 – Bab el wad Read Post »

israeli politics

When the sun came out this afternoon, around noon, I really wanted to go for a walk.  But not where there were people.  I was really paranoid about this part.  People have become our enemy.  

Anyway, Ezi drove to Jaffa.  He wanted to see what was left of his grandfather’s hangars – but there was really nothing to see.  I don’t know what the plans for the future are instead of those hangars – but they look really big.  And people were celebrating everywhere.  Look how gorgeous:

november 28, 2020 – when the sun came out today – Jaffa Read Post »

blog, poetry

the world outside is of course going to hell – not only have we let hell loose by opening up schools and shopping malls at the same time, but a top Iranian nuclear scientist has been assassinated.  Whether we were involved our not, we’re to blame and we will pay.   So we stay home.  In fact, the worse the news, the more we make cakes.  Right now, Ezi is making a Dobos Torte.  Write me for the recipe

Me, I’m finishing up the  poems that I wrote with Robert Priest so we can record them next week as a disk.  Here’s an example:

Your Legs

 

“Your legs

Are not your best feature,

They should be played down,”

She said – and I looked up at her face

To see if she meant it

Since except for the blue lines

interlacing with red on the skin,

My legs are quite superb

And the crisscross of veins

Remind me of my father

And although I never saw her,

His mother.  I merge

With their chronicles of aches,

Long hours of standing

When the pain from below

Calls me back to my body

From wherever I was, saying

“Whatever you have to do

Cannot be as significant

As the generations that created

Those legs upon which you stand.”

 

They may be

My best feature.

 

 

november 27, 2020 – playing with poems while we prepare a third wave Read Post »