וזה היה באמת נורא מוזר: מה שהקוראים באנגלית כל כך אהבו - ממש
יצאו מגידרם - לקוראים הישראליים זה אפילו לא הזיז... מישהו
סתום שם אצלכם - היא קראה...

Yisroel Baruchin - New Poems

Translation from the Hebrew into the English by the
author


In the Military Mobile Hospital

Who was born like me, in 1938,
Who looked for partners in his trip through life;
What other baby was conveyed home on the floor
Of an armored bus, while his young mother
Knelt over him, sheltering;
Or who else became a tourist
crossing over alien lands
his whole life but leaving
behind his shuddering
heart, flapping back there,
still in the military mobile hospital?

Always I remind myself:
We were only one year old when
The fate of our world was molded and altered
by a bloodbath, and our first words --
Compressed words, bad words -- became
Precisely the ancient amulet.

(c) All Rights reserved.

To Die at the Springs of El-Hamma

Down into the fichus boulevards at the springs of El-Hamma
come the starlings, trembling then landing.
The water is hot at the springs of El-Hamma,
Yet night is more hostile than day.
Layers of sand on those who landed before:
Layers of sand cover their faces,
The water is dead at the springs of El-Hamma.
From great distances come the starlings
Beating to these death-ponds: always they come.
Who sends these birds to end
In the booby-trapped springs of El-Hamma?
They fly so urgently, with no chance or time,
No time for life and no chance to learn
If someone expects their return.
The starlings are flying in to die in the seducer
Springs of El-Hamma, poisoned by the salt.
Fowl can't stop the soldiers, for their faces
Are pointed into the earth.  Oh, how easy it is
To finish as a starling, and not as a soldier.


(c) All Rights reserved.

Stone Snowy Mounds

Mounds of dead soldiers
Grow from the white snow,
From Yanta and Amiq, Meducha and Baruk.
Wintry freezing water assaults the streams
By the villages of Ein Zechalta and Ein Tzophar.

Among the blackened cedar palms,
The bulldozers raise rocks
Above the dead who lie under the snow.

The spring grass, the memory,
Suspends this siege on the mounds,
and tries to see who once lived but now
Lies under these melting waves of stones.

(c) All Rights reserved.

Far From Saida

Far from Saida your face
sinks into a memory sea:
Blue in the waters, wet and salted,
I carry it as a crib, reverently, without shaking.
Your face abruptly is thrown to shore
as my sea swells with deep longings.
I kneel in the soft sand to lift my food
From the Army doufflebag, the one
Your velvet hands packed last night;
The murmur of plastic wrapping,
The sour smell of condensation, both rise
From the sausage and cheese sandwiches.
Then I bend, lower than the horizon,
And I lean, whispering, to almost realize . . .
I take out a sandwich, chewing,
smelling, then the memory . . .
Suddenly I roll over
Into the warm sand
To kiss your fingerprints.

(c) All Rights reserved.

The Crows Shout

The crows now shout in
The cold winter, gliding and black
As the young soldiers' ghosts
Whose dear faces now climb
up to the treetops, then stop suspended in
The branches . . . the crows shout,
Haunted, abruptly quarreling
Because they feel the boys' vapor breath;
They leap in the evening's soft air,
Then drop at last, with drooped wings
And empty throats, resting as if betrayed
By silences or lack of protests.
Tomorrow they'll take flight and vanish,
ending far from here, without stopping once.

(c) All Rights reserved.

MIA . . . His Coming Back

And they waited for his coming back
From this war that never ends:
The unkempt lawn, the untended tree,
The faded plastic chairs,
The narrow rusty gate
And its crying hinges.
His mother, his brother, father and sister,
All frozen inside time: withered
In winter, bowed from days of grief.

His family is certain there will be a day
When he suddenly comes; then everything
In this place will start to move: the grass will grow,
The tree will carry its fruit, the plastic
Chairs become polished, and the narrow  
Gate will start to turn, will open,
And never close again.

If only he would come back, only just appear:
The bubble of time will burst,
Their scarred hearts will beat smoothly,
They will drop to their knees, slowly,
And lift their eyes to him,
Weeping their thanksgiving prayer.

(c) All Rights Reserved.

Among Their Pictures

In my memory I'm the one who always wanders
Within their pictures: the stretched black
Strips around the gravestone photograph,
The standing twisted flowers,
The burning candles under their icons.
From inside the scene: suddenly, on
The white margins, I see their fingerprints
Which now appear along with their laughing voices;
Their stifled whispers are breaking me.
Oh, how different it should all be
With them, they should be running
With their warm breath panting,
And not inanimate and flaccid
Like they are now, without their lives.

(c) All Rights Reserved.

The Young Students

"The young dead soldiers do not speak.
Nevertheless, they are heard in the still houses: who has
not heard them?
They have a silence that speaks for them at night when the
clock counts."
-- Archibald MacLeish.


On the morning of Memorial Day I walk into the class.
"The young dead soldiers do not speak.
Nevertheless, they are heard . . . "
I read to my young students;
My voice echoes in the silent space of the class.
Their eyes are fastened to my lips,
Fear beates upon my face:

I'm the one who knows,
I'm the one who remembers;
I bite my lip, and  begin to cry.

Abruptly I flee from the classroom,
As the eyes of my young students
Drill into the silent space in my brain.
Speak to me, dear children,
How I truly need to hear
Your voices now.

(c) All Rights Reserved.

ON THE WAY TO NABATIYA

The path to Nabbatiya is truly unpleasant,
even for veteran soldiers such as myself
who, as you know, "are not killed,
but simply vaporize . . ."

I try to bring a quick smile to the lips
of my escort rangers crew, "What do
we really have to lose?" I ask them,

"we'll go back home, and what good things
are waiting there for us -- boring work,
heart attacks, accidents?  But here,
you'll be gone in a minute, all at once,
and you won't even know where the bullet
comes from, the one that rids you of all
your troubles . . .

then you'll be granted a charity,
because you'll finish your life
in 'dignity,' as a brave soldier;
soon you'll be posted in the newspapers,
even the weakest of you who never would
have been absolved -- not for a single word --
in your entire life.

And the principal charity?
You'll remain young forever,
for generations upon generations,
for eternity, and no one can take
this from you."

Then suddenly, unheedingly,
the joke transforms into an unexpected
seriousness  . . . the curvature
of the narrow path becomes sharp;
dark, little bridges appear from nowhere,
as the rocks aside the road draw near
with a frightening closeness,
and the dark, green wood
appears suspicious.

(c) All rights Reserved.

Illusion

Inside the crying, inside the lament,
I sometimes feel the buds of recovery
Might burst into life. As if here --
At the bottom of my deepest hole --
I only need to climb, simply climb.

And when I'm laying there, immersed,
With salty water flowing from my eyes,
Streaming from matted eyelashes,
I delude myself that I'm redeemed:

In the cost of skin, of finger, of nail,
In their memories that are sunk in streams
Of salted rain, in all those ghosts who try
To make sprouts in my soul, a greenhouse    
Who instead shelters my flawed seeds of grief
And sorrow, without a chance of consolation.

(C) All Rights Reserved.

Lily Bulbs

On Memorial Day I knelt
To plant Lily bulbs in flowerpots,
And put them in the concrete holders
By the small military corner at our cemetery.
When they sprout, to shout at me,
I'll hide them again inside the soil.
Sitting on the stone-bench, I watch every day,
How green and fresh they rise,
How the flowering white candles
Are so shiny in autumn.
How their blossoms become yellow,
Only to wither, fade, and I remain unconsoled.
And a year later, in the spring, I will kneel
Again to the Lily flowerpots, to see
How they cracked the dirt, and
How the clay pottery collapsed,
Broken, never to be mended.

(C) All Rights Reserved.

On Memorial Day

On Memorial day I run off from the groves.
I'm upset again, as every year.
Through the picnic smoke I watch while
The lamenting land, mournful, slumps its shoulders.
And when the ghosts are all assembled before me,
From the rocks, from the caves, from the earth,
I give a command: you are all free to memories.
I turn my face away, then whisper to us living:
That's it, Gentlemen, they are trapped.
They can't escape. They left behind
Their last will and testament, here in our hands.

(c) All Rights Reserved.

Salamanders on the North Border Road

Two salamanders are crossing the North
Border Road. Sluggish and indifferent, they
Creep under the borderline barbed wire. I stop
The patrol. Above the ravines and fields,
Silence suddenly drops for a moment: we watch
Their orange backs, a poison color, their tails
Striped black, and their evil aura darkens
The morning light. I feel the danger,
And give an order, but even helmets and
Bullet-proof vests can't help when your terrain
abruptly explodes: in the orange glow
I can see the creatures: evasive, lazy, innocent,
As if they don't carry on their backs
Marks of fear and mortal hints.

(C) All Rights Reserved.

PAINFUL BIRDS

The helicopters, skillful, painful birds,
Again bombard targets above my head:
I sit, shaking at my writing desk,
I bend down to my notebook, clench
My shuddering pen. As if they know...
As if they sense an inner tracer, a red laser
Signal: they make another bomb run,
This time circling above my aging heart,
Who hastens to remove its rooms and
And empty spaces as though they had become
Black tanks, easy targets, sluggish vehicles
Flooded by grief and suffering.

(c) All Rights Reserved.

Yolki Flowers at Tel Hazika

That autumn, when their time came,
The Yolki flowers bloomed on Tel Hazika.
On the rocks, among shredded helmets,
Dark yellow patches suddenly blossomed,
Blinding yellows, as if they warned:
You can never forget us,
We will never give you rest;
You will always, every autumn, wonder
From where came this yellow yolki color? From where
Came this egg-yolk color? And where is the swallowed
Rock, that turned to red, submerged,
Soured from forgotten blood?


editor's notes:
Tel Hazika is the name of a basalt hill on the Golan
Heights, where battalion had a
bloody battle against the Syrian army in 1973.
Yolki is the Hebrew name of a yellow flower that blooms
every autumn, in the northern
Israel, after the first rain.
(c) All Rights Reserved.

MY REPRIEVE IS STILL VALID

In this winter I watch from the
Far fields: the shouting rumble of
Grey cranes in the fallow, and
Blackbirds singing in the
Pine thicket. It is the Sabbath day;
I go to the marshes, and drink from
The fragrance of my childhood . . .
Forgotten daffodils. Children are
Collecting mushrooms: oh, the
Eely skullcap of a fresh
Champignon; oh, the sand grains of
Mushrooms in the sizzling pot!
My head suddenly feels encircled
by onion steam, and this familiar
aroma blocks me. Abruptly I stop.
I surrender to my memories. And I
Say to myself: right now, this morning,
My reprieve is still valid.


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IBID

"Ibid, ibid," and even more "ibid . . . "
I was sent, in my youth, to
The footnotes on the bottom of the page.
But I couldn't see how these "ibids,"
Below the scrolls, below the papers,
Helped waste my life there wandering
Among them. Today I'll not wonder any
More: I know there is not any "ibid" that
Can divert me from the final hole
Who waits for my life to finish.
My last "ibid" is already there:
Waiting for me, ready for me . . .
To its end I'm sent.

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My Old Fidelities

My old fidelities,
Oh, my old fidelities have abandoned me
Lately, as though they already observe
My impending fade, my nearing oblivion
Which comes sneaking toward me.
My old fidelities,
I revere them: a far off Mount Hermon,
The ash of oak trees, the smoke of bonfires,
Sweet Tea, a drink with old friends,
Forgotten notebooks whose leaves
Are badly torn, your arm that was
Stretched to me at the grove with the thin
Hair that wonders and waves
Within the wind, the silent movie of my
Old sights who always escape from me,
And that heartrending pursuit, to chase
All what was . . . and will never be again.

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