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Ramy Ditzanny
On Reflection, After the Lebanon War, 1983
Down linoleum passages of a greenish shade,
in striped pyjamas we promenade
along endless washable walls
wallways within arms reach (Play it safe, we say)
remote-eyed we seem far far away.
Back and forth at evening time we tramp
slowly, with immense concentration
choking miners fumbling in high-concentration blackdamp,
a chain gang in a hard labour camp,
a death march band in a concentration camp.
And the matrons of mercy, angel-wardresses in starch,
hastily crossing crisscrossing our awkward march
pink hands clutching urine flasks, sour yolky yellow rich,
and/or fresh turds in flat rustless pans, bluish shimmer, metal touch
pounce at random, come upon us, snatch a victim for their testbatch.
And I halt in my path to face one terminally private room
where stands, in striped shirt, glaring in the gloom,
a human skeleton, a Muselmann*, shrivelled and consumed;
his lopped-off martyrs skull bobs slowly, looms,
moored to torso by a salt-corroded rope of neck;
give him twenty, not a year more in his sockets fear bores.
And my feelings brim to tears at this anguish, mortal misery,
and at my agony that cannot reach his agony with mine
(and at the obscure fancy that I resemble him, perhaps,
like all of us old chaps).
And see, I sway a little and he too, sways,
I sway the other way as if praying the Jewish way
again hes with me, dancing with me, in a faultless minuet:
tilting slowly just as I,
face to face, dim eyehole to eye
a mirror-image to perfection staring at me in the dark
deep in reflection.
My Good Arm
And on that night I wakened frail and soaked with dread,
Finding a heavy arm placed across my chest.
I tried to remove it but my arm was like lead.
A bad omen, I knew.
Indeed, sometimes I awaken now from a quick nap in our ward,
And the heavy arm of a man-without-an-arm
weighs heavily on my chest.
But my good arm
My good arm
Sheared from the shoulder in one agonizing slice
Flies over a moon-struck city,
Come nights
Rolls down nylon tights
Feels soft white thighs.
Translated by Peretz Kidron
Legging Behind
A stork has one leg.
A ladder, two.
A tripod has tri pods.
A fly, says Aristotle, four.
A stud bull, five.
A dung beetle, six.
A millepede stampedes over mille pede
without missing a pede!
And I, a leg and a half.
A wooden calf.
A walking stick with an ivory knob
finely carved.
Some girls up the street
say my limp is chic.
Im grateful, since
Im vain about my appearance.
Not to mention my degree:
Im an electronics engineer.
Nevertheless, I confess
despite being in my prime,
my efforts sublime,
robust thighs, my stick a beauty,
it gets harder and harder
to overtake the cuties.
Translated by the author with Barbara Goldberg
* A term for a concentration camp inmate, cut off from reality, who has lost all will to live.
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