Timid snakes, silenced martyrs - the all-knowing
owl flies soundlessly on the border of day and dusk.
At the moment of your birth Death breathes in your face.
Until then it cannot touch you at all.
Translated
By
Rika Lesser
Daphne Merkin
A GRANDFATHER, LATE AFTERNOON
He must have been
a tough cookie once
with a yen for money
and pretty, silly women.
Now he is just
another old man,
weeping often
for a drummed-up past.
He sits where he is set,
this one-time tyrant:
in the sun.
Even his toes
don't like the shade.
Vat ees your name
he asks me again,
not sure if I am a nurse
or a granddaughter
worth her weight
.
.
In
marnage.
My name puzzles him.
Ees not fan the Bible?
I offer it in Hebrew
