As Things Stand

translated from the Hebrew by Asher Harris

Nice of you to phone, it was good to hear
Your voice. And how are you? Well done, you've
Come on. I saw what you'd had published in the
Magazine. Too true, quite a few years have passed since then: And they've had their way, a few grandchildren,
I won't say how many. You're really not supposed
To count. And what about me? the same walls
And forty-two square meters. The ground
Shifts, and round about everything is cracked, and at night
I tremble: sudden fractures, the plaster
Flakes, and on the roof bats spew out bursts of
Fruit squishy with vomit and seeds. And if
I tune my ear to the silence that comes
From your telephone, I can clearly hear:
Droves of yearnings galloping away to the distant hills.

A Cracked Statuette

In the summer of seventy-nine,
Sheltered in the shade, on a step in Market
Street, in the shop of a Christian Arab,
While my hand was storking the halo of hair
Of a graven statuette -
A startling voice suddenly broke out,
A young announcer begging, pleading: hurry, whoever is able,
Whoever is near, run to the tower
Of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher -
Through the lattice you may know her:
Wrapped all in black but her hair is fair,
And her car still pulses below her.
And when I arrived - I was late -
With those who were called to her aid,
The helpers, the radio was screaming,
And all the city was frozen, holding its breath -

Already she lay there, stretched out in the square:
Innocent, beautiful, and wrapped all about in the shining
Radiance of a cracked statuette.

translated from the Hebrew by Asher Harris, 1999.

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Biography

Elisha Porat, the 1996 winner of Israel's Prime Minister's Prize for Literature, has published 17 volumes of fiction and poetry, in Hebrew, since 1973. His works have appeared in translation in Israel, the United States, Canada and England. The English translation of his short story collection "The Messiah of LaGuardia", was released in 1997. His latest work, a book of Hebrew poetry, "The Dinosaurs of the Language", was recently published in Israel. Elisha Porat was born in 1938 to a "pioneer" family in Palestine-Eretz Yisrael (pre Israel);his parents were among the founders of Kibbutz Ein Hahoresh, a Kibbutz on the Sharon plain near the city of Hadera. Today Porat, devoted to the community ideal, still make his home near the original tent erected by his parents back in the early '30s. In 1956 Porat was drafted into the IDF (the Israeli Defence Forces) and fought in three wars: the Six Day War in 1967, the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and the War of south Lebanon in 1982. As a lifelong member of his Kibbutz, Porat has worked many years as a farmer as well as a writer. His labors in the Kibbutz fruit orchard, perhaps contrasting with his military tours of duty, have always influenced his art. Besides writing, his current endeavors include editorial duties for several literary journals. His translated stories and poems have for years found their way into print, like: Midstream, Ariel, Snake nation Review, and most recently the Boston review.