Anniversaries of WarTel Garth I brought my children to the mound Where once I fought battles, So they would understand the things I did do And forgive me for the things I didn't do. The distance between my striding legs and my head Grows bigger and I grow smaller. Those days grow away from me, These times grow away from me too, And I'm in the middle, without them, on this mound With my children. A light afternoon wind blows But only a few people move in the blowing wind, Bend down a little with the grass and the flowers. Dandelions cover the mound. You could say, as dandelions in multitude. I brought my children to the mound And we sat there, "on its back and its side" As in the poem by Shmuel Ha-Nagid in Spain, Like me, a man of hills and a man of wars, Who sang a lullaby to his soldiers before the battle. Yet I did not talk to my heart, as he did, But to my children. To the mound, we were the resurrection, Fleeting like this springtime, eternal like it too. Ruhama In this wadi, we camped in the days of the war. Many years have passed since, many victories, Many defeats. Many consolations I gathered in my life And wasted, much sorrow have I collected and spilled out in vain, Many things I said, like waves of the sea In Ashkelon, to the west, always saying the same things. But as long as I live, my soul remembers And my body ripens slowly in the flame of its own annals. The evening sky bends down like the sound of a trumpet Above us, and the lips move like lips in a prayer Before there was any God in the world. Here we lay by day, and at night we went to battle. The smell of the sand as it was, and the smell of eucalyptus leaves As it was, and the smell of the wind as it was. And I do now what every memory dog does: I howl quietly And piss a turf of remembrance around me, No one may enter it. Huleikat-the Third Poem About Dicky In these hills, even the towers of oil wells Are a mere memory. Here Dicky fell, Four years older than me, like a father to me In times of trouble and distress. Now I am older than him By forty years and I remember him Like a young son, and I am his father, old and grieving. And you, who remember only faces, Do not forget the hands stretched out, The feet running lightly, The words. Remember: even the departure to terrible battles Passes by gardens and windows And children playing, a dog barking. Remind the fallen fruit Of its leaves and branches, Remind the sharp thorns How soft and green they were in springtime, And do not forget, Even a fist Was once an open palm and fingers. The Shore of Ashkelon Here, at the shore of Ashkelon, we reached the end of memory, Like rivers reaching the sea. The near past sinks into the far past, And from the depths, the far overflows the near. Peace to him that is far off and to him that is near. Here, among the broken statues and pillars, I ask how did Samson bring down the temple Standing eyeless, saying: "Let me die with the Philistines." Did he embrace the pillars as in a last love Or did he push them away with his arms, To be alone in his death. What Did I Learn in the Wars What did I learn in the wars: To march in time to swinging arms and legs Like pumps pumping an empty well. To march in a row and be alone in the middle, To dig into pillows, featherbeds, the body of a beloved woman, And to yell "Mama," when she cannot hear, And to yell "God," when I don't believe in Him, And even if I did believe in Him I wouldn't have told Him about the war As you don't tell a child about grown-ups' horrors. What else did I learn. I learned to reserve a path for retreat. In foreign lands I rent a room ina hotel Near the airport or railroad station. And even in wedding halls Always to watch the little door With the "Exit" sign in red letters. A battle too begins Like rhythmical drums for dancing and ends With a "retreat at dawn." Forbidden love And battle, the two of them sometimes end like this. But above all I learned the wisdom of camouflage, Not to stand out, not to be recognized, Not to be apart from what's around me, Even not from my beloved. Let them think I am a bush or a lamb, A tree, a shadow of a tree, A doubt, a shadow of a doubt, A living hedge, a dead stone, A house, a corner of a house. If I were a prophet I would have dimmed the glow of the vision And darkened my faith with black paper And covered the magic with nets. And when my time comes, I shall don the camouflage garb of my end: The white of clouds and a lot of sky blue And stars that have no end. Yehuda Amichai (b. 1924)
War
A procession of steel roosters. Boys painted with whitewash.
Filings of aluminum destroy houses. They throw deafening balls
into the air, completely red. No one will fly away into the sky.
The earth attracts bodies and lead.
Zbigniew Herbert (1924 - 1998)
The Ardennes Forest
Cup your hands to scoop up sleep
as you would draw a grain of water
and the forest will come: a green cloud
a birch trunk like a chord of light
and a thousand eyelids fluttering
with forgotten leafy speech
then you will recall the white morning
when you waited for the opening of the gates
you know this land is opened by a bird
that sleeps in a tree and the tree in the earth
but here is a spring of new questions
underfoot the currents of bad roots
look at the pattern on the bark where
a chord of music tightens
the lute player who presses the frets
so the silent resounds
push away leaves: a wild strawberry
dew on a leaf the comb of grass
further a wing of yellow damselfly
and an ant burying its sister
a wild pear sweetly ripens
above the treacheries of belladonnas
without waiting for greater rewards
sit under the tree
cup your hands to draw up memory
of the dead names dried grain
again the forest: a charred cloud
forehead branded by black light
and a thousand lids pressed
tightly on motionless eyeballs
a tree and the air broken
betrayed faith of empty shelters
that other forest is for us is for you
the dead also ask for fairy tales
for a handful of herbs water of memories
therefore by needles by rustling
and faint threads of fragrances-
no matter that a branch stops you
a shadow leads you through winding passages-
you will find and open
our Ardennes Forest
Zbigniew Herbert (1924 - 1998)
Psalm
137
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"
How can we sing the songs of the Lord
while in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill.
May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy.
Remember, O Lord, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
"Tear it down," they cried,
"tear it down to its foundations!"
O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is he who repays you
for what you have done to us--
he who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.
This Land's No Joy
This land's no joy.
By day they wipe off sweat, and tears by night.
To prison camps and barracks they all stream--
a trickle will come back.
Children look pale and sick,
like young banana leaves.
Of plowing women take full charge.
In hamlets not a glimpse of younger men.
Death notices drop thick and fast on thatch.
Here all is grief--
only loudspeakers will spout joy.
Nguyen Chi Thien (b. 1933)
She sat on the willow bark watching part of the battle of Crecy, the shrieks, the moans, the wails, the trampling and tumbling. During the fourteenth charge of the French cavalry she mated with a brown-eyed male fly from Vadincourt. She rubbed her legs together sitting on a disembowled horse meditating on the immortality of flies. Relieved she alighted on the blue tongue of the Duke of Clervaux. When silence settled and the whisper of decay softly circled the bodies and just a few arms and legs twitched under the trees, she began to lay her eggs on the single eye of Johann Uhr, the Royal Armorer. And so it came to pass-- she was eaten by a swift fleeing from the fires of Estres. Miroslav Holub (b. 1923)
By the sewage puddles of Sabra and Shatila, there you transported human beings in impressive quantities from the world of the living to the world of eternal light. Night after night. First they shot, they hanged, then they slaughtered with their knives. Terrified women climbed up on a ramp of earth, frantic: "They're slaughtering us there, in Shatila." A thin crust of moon over the camps. Our soldiers lit up the place with searchlights till it was bright as day. "Back to the camp, beat it!" a soldier yelled at the screaming women from Sabra and Shatila. He was following orders. And the children already lying in puddles of filth, their mouths gaping, at peace. No one will harm them. You can't kill a baby twice. And the moon grew fuller and fuller till it became a round loaf of gold. Our sweet soldiers wanted nothing for themselves. All they ever asked was to come home safe. Dahlia Ravikovitch (b. 1936)