DAHLIA RAVIKOVITCH
Grand Days Have Gone By Her
How did it go?
Untypically, she was quick to recollect.
A vineyard didn't spring from the earth.
An
orchard stood there,
sickly,
slow to blossom.
A walnut tree that bloomed failed to ripen.
As though some natural yielding element
were missing from the ground.
Hard green lemons.
A balding lawn.
A great calm.
In the west, the hedge grew wild
and naturally the honeysucker
(later named honeybird),
were it alive today,
would have been twenty already.
There were manhunts in the valley.
Fire in the brush.
The summer burnt as usual in a hellish blaze,
the evening cast shadows with no relief.
Between death and death
they sang to her
the songs of Zion.
She wouldn't go to bed before dawn,
before a bird twi ttered.
In those years
she herself died
three or four times.
Not a definitive final death,
but a sort of death throes.
Great yearnings gripped her
in the bosom of night,
mighty emotional throbs.
