by Chana Bloch
3
My life is sad like the wandering
of wanderers.
My hopes are widows,
my chances won’t get married, ever.
Our loves wear the uniforms of orphans
in an orphanage.
The rubber balls come back to their hands
from the wall.
The sun doesn’t come back.
Both of us are an illusion.
4
All night your empty shoes
screamed alongside your bed.
Your right hand hangs down from your dream.
Your hair is studying night-ese
from a torn textbook of wind.
The moving curtains:
ambassadors of foreign superpowers.
5
If you open your coat,
I have to double my love.
If you wear the round white hat,
I have to exaggerate my blood.
In the place where you love,
all the furniture has to be cleared out from the room,
all the trees, all the mountains, all the oceans.
The world is too narrow.
6
The moon, fastened with a chain,
keeps quiet outside.
The moon, caught in the olive branches,
can’t break free.
The moon of round hopes
is rolling among clouds.
7
When you smile,
serious ideas get exhausted.
At night the mountains keep quiet beside you,
in the morning the sand goes with you down to the beach.
When you do nice things to me
all the heavy industries shut down.
8
The mountains have valleys
and I have thoughts.
They stretch out
until fog and until no roads.
Behind the port city
masts stood.
Behind me God begins
with ropes and ladders,
with crates and cranes,
with forever and evers.
Spring found us;
all the mountains around
are stone weights
to weigh how much we love.
The sharp grass sobbed
into our dark hiding-place;
spring found us.
Children’s Procession
Upon the banners fluttering overhead
are verses with a day-off from all the trouble
they live with in their black and heavy Bible;
and already, in the air, the poems fade
like smoke above them, to the starting-point
where the children left behind: the trampled grass,
candy wrappers, footprints, cards, a bus,
and also a little girl in tears, who couldn’t
find what she’d lost. But in the interim,
far from here, everything stopped, and then
they had to march in place, a long long time,
while at the bright edges of the birds of day
a row of angels dangled upside-down
like shirts on a clothesline; they arrived that way.
Ballad of the Washed Hair
The stones on the mountain are always
awake and white.
In the dark town, angels on duty
are changing shifts.
A girl who has washed her hair
asks the hard world, as if it were Samson,
where is it weak, what is its secret.
A girl who has washed her hair
puts new clouds on her head.
The scent of her drying hair is
prophesying in the streets and among stars.
The nervous air between the night trees
starts to relax.
The thick telephone book of world history
closes.
Sonnet from the Voyage
To V.S., captain of the Rimmon
Gulls escorted us. From time to time
one would fly down upon the waves and settle
there, like the rubber ducks when I was little
inside the bathtub of a far-off dream.
Then fog descended, all the winds were stilled,
a buoy danced and its slow ringing raised
memories of another life, effaced.
And then we knew: that we were in the world.
And the world sensed us there, with empathy;
God called to you and called to me again
with the same call, by this time almost banal,
that once addressed the patriarchs in the Bible.
We didn’t answer. Even the mild rain
splashed down, as if being wasted, on the sea.
The Visit of the Queen of Sheba
1. Preparations for the Journey
Not resting but
moving her lovely butt,
the Queen of Sheba,
having decided to leave, a-
rose from her lair
among dark spells, tossed her hair,
clapped her hands,
the servants fainted, and
already she drew in the sand
with her big toe:
King Solomon, as though
he were a rubber ball, an
apocalyptic, bearded herring, an
imperial walking-stick, an
amalgam, half chicken
and half Solomon.
The minister of protocol
went too far, with all
those peacocks and ivory boxes.
Later on,
she began to yawn
deliciously, she stretched like a cat
so that
he would be able to sniff
her odiferous
heart. They spared no expense,
they brought feathers, to tickle
his ears, to make his last defense
prickle.
She had been brought
a vague report
about circumcision,
she wanted to know everything, with absolute precision,
her curiosity
blossomed like leprosy,
the disheveled sisters of her corpuscles
screamed through their loudspeaker into all her muscles,
the sky undid
its buttons, she made herself up and slid
into a vast commotion,
felt her head
spin, all the brothels of her emotions
were lit up in red.
In the factory
of her blood, they worked frantically
till night came: a dark night, like an old table,
a night as eternal
as a jungle.
2. The Ship Waits
A ship in the harbor. Night.
Among the shadows, a white
ship, with a cargo of yearnings,
some temperate, some burning,
a ship that desire launches,
a ship without a subconscious.
Already among the sails
sway the Queen’s colored veils,
made of the silk of sparrows
who had died of their tiny sorrows
before they could flutter forth
to the cool lands of the North.
It’s worthwhile, at any rate,
for the white ship to wait
cheek to cheek with the dock
and let itself gently rock
between ideas of sand
and ideas of ocean, and
endure its insomnia
till morning, etc.
3. Setting Sail
She called her thighs to return to each other,
knee-cheek to knee-cheek, and her soul
was already a zebra of moods, good and bad.
In the oven of her body, her heart
rotated on a spit. The morning screamed,
a tropical rain fell.
The forecasters,
chained to the spot, forecasted,
the engineers of her sleep went out on weary camels,
all the little fish of her laughter fled
before the shark of her awakening rage. In her armpits
faint-hearted corals hid,
night-lizards left their footprints on her belly.
She sat in bed, sharpening her charms and her riddles
like colored pencils. From the beards
of old blowhards, she had had an African apron made,
her secrets were embroidered on scarves.
But the lions still held the laws
like the two tablets over the holy ark
and over the whole world.
4. The Journey on the Red Sea
Fish blew through the sea and through
the long anticipation. Captains
plotted their course by the map
of her longing. Her nipples preceded her like scouts,
her hairs whispered to one another
like conspirators. In the dark corners between sea and ship
the counting started, quietly.
A solitary bird sang
in the permanent trill of her blood. Rules fell
from biology textbooks, clouds were torn like contracts,
at noon she dreamt about
making love naked in the snow, egg yolks dripping
down her leg, the thrill of yellow beeswax. All the air
rushed to be breathed inside her. The sailors cried out
in the foreign language of fish.
But underneath the world, underneath the sea,
there were cantillations as if on the Sabbath:
everything sang each other.
5. Solomon Waits
Never any rain,
never any rain,
always clouds without closure,
always raw-voiced love.
Shepherds of the wind returned
from the pasture.
In the world’s courtyards,
blossoms of stone opened
consecrated to strange gods.
Trembling ladders dreamt about
humans dreaming about them.
But he
saw the world,
the slightly torn
lining of the world.
And was awake like many lit stables
in Megiddo.
Never any rain,
never any rain,
always raw-voiced love,
always quarries.
6. The Queen Enters the Throne Room
The dewy rose of her dark pudenda
was doubled in the mirrored floor. His agenda
seemed superfluous now, and all the provisions
he had made for her, the decrees and decisions
he had worked out while he was judging the last
of the litigants. Then he rolled up his past
like a map; and he sat there, reeling, giddy,
and saw in the mirror a body and a body,
from above and below, like the queen of spades.
In the bedroom of his heart he pulled down the shades,
he covered his blood with sackcloth, tried
to think of icebergs, of putrefied
camel flesh. And his face changed seasons
like a speeded-up landscape. He followed his visions
to the end of them, growing wiser and warm,
and he knew that her soul’s form was like the form
of her supple body, which he soon would embrace—
as a violin’s form is the form of its case.
7. Who Could Stump Whom
In the pingpong of questions and answers
not a sound was heard
except:
ping . . . pong . . .
And the cough of the learned counselors
and the sharp tearing of paper.
He made black waves with his beard
so that her words would drown in it.
She made a jungle
of her hair, for him to be lost in.
Words were plunked down with a click
like chessmen.
Thoughts with high masts
sailed past one another.
Empty crossword puzzles filled up
as the sky fills with stars,
secret caches were opened,
buckles and vows were unfastened,
cruel religions
were tickled, and laughed
horribly.
In the final game,
her words played with his words, her tongue
with his tongue.
Precise maps
were spread, face up, on the table.
Everything was revealed. Hard.
And pitiless.
8. The Empty Throne Room
All the word games
lay scattered out of their boxes.
Boxes were left gaping
after the game.
Sawdust of questions,
shells of cracked parables,
woolly packing materials from
crates of fragile riddles.
Heavy wrapping paper
of love and strategies.
Used solutions rustled
in the trash of thinking.
Long problems
were rolled up on spools,
miracles were locked in their cages.
Chess horses were led back to the stable.
Empty cartons that had
“Handle With Care!”
printed on them
sang hymns of thanksgiving.
Later, in ponderous parade, the King’s soldiers arrived.
She fled, sad
as black snakes
in the dry grass.
A moon of atonement spun around the towers
as on Yom Kippur eve.
Caravans with no camels, no people,
no sound, departed and departed and departed.
From In a Right Angle: A Cycle of Quatrains
1
In the sands of prayer my father saw angels’ traces.
He saved me a space, but I wandered in other spaces.
That’s why his face was bright and why mine is scorched.
Like an old office calendar, I’m covered with times and places.
9
I kiss the hem of my fate, as my father would kiss the side
of his prayer-shawl before I would wrap myself deep inside.
I will always remember the free summer clouds and always
the stars that glimmer beyond our need to decide.
13
Along the summer, along the sandy shoreline
of the heart. During the gray stones, at the edge of a lover’s incline.
Deep within the black ships, under the grief,
near the steep wish, inside the wind of time.
18
The driver asked. We answered, All the way.
His shoulders said, If that’s what you want, okay.
We paid a distant look, a close hello.
Our lives were stamped To the last stop: one-way.
24
My love writes commentaries on me, like the rabbis explaining the Bible.
Spring translates the world into every language. On the table
our bread keeps prophesying. Our words are lovely and fresh.
But Fate works inside us overtime, as hard as he’s able.
30
I escaped once and don’t remember what god it was from, what test.
So I’m floating inside my life, like Jonah in his dark fish, at rest.
I’ve made a deal with my fish, since we’re both in the guts of the world:
I won’t get out of him, ever. He’ll endure me and not digest.
34
Like torn shirts that my mother couldn’t mend,
the dead are strewn about the world. Like them,
we’ll never love or know what voices weep
and what winds will pass by to say Ame
n.
43
Two hopes away from the battle, I had a vision of peace.
My weary head must keep walking, my legs keep dreaming apace.
The scorched man said, I am the bush that burned and that was consumed:
come hither, leave your shoes on your feet. This is the place.
45
A young soldier lies in the springtime, cut off from his name.
His body is budding and flowering. From artery and vein
his blood babbles on, uncomprehending and small.
God boils the flesh of the lamb in its mother’s pain.
46
In the right angle between a dead man and his mourner I’ll start
living from now on, and wait there as it grows dark.
The woman sits with me, the girl in her fiery cloud
rose into the sky, and into my wide-open heart.
As for the World
As for the world,
I am always like one of Socrates’ students:
walking beside him,
hearing his seasons and generations,
and all I can do is say:
Yes, certainly that is true.
You are right again.
It is exactly as you have said.
As for my life, I am always
Venice:
everything that is streets
is in other people.
In me—love, dark and flowing.
As for the scream, as for the silence,
I am always a shofar:
hoarding, all year long, its one blast
for the terrible Days of Awe.
As for the deeds,
I am always Cain:
a fugitive and a vagabond before the deed that I won’t do,
or after the deed that
can’t be undone.
As for the palm of your hand,
as for the signals of my heart
and the plans of my flesh,
as for the writing on the wall,
I am always an ignoramus: I can’t
read or write
and my head is empty as a weed,
knowing only the secret whisper
and the motion in the wind
when a fate passes through me, to
some other place.
In the Middle of This Century
In the middle of this century we turned to each other
with half face and full eyes
like an ancient Egyptian painting
and for a short time.
I stroked your hair in a direction opposite to your journey,
we called out to each other
as people call out the names of the cities they don’t stop in
along the road.
Beautiful is the world that wakes up early for evil,
beautiful is the world that falls asleep to sin and mercy,
in the profanity of our being together, you and I.
Beautiful is the world.
The earth drinks people and their loves
