Tourists
Once I sat on the steps by a gate at David's TowerI placed my two heavy baskets at my side. A group of tourists was standing aroundtheir guide and I became their target marker."You see that man with the baskets?Just right of his head there's an arch from the Roman period. Just right of his head." "But he's moving, he's moving!"
I said to myself: redemption will come only if their guide tells them, "You see that arch fromthe Roman period? It's not important: but next to it,left and down a bit, there sits a man who's bought fruit and vegetables for his family".
Jerusalem Poems
from "Songs to Jerusalem"
Every night God takes his glittering merchandise out of his showcase -
holy charriots, tables of law, fancy beads,crosses and bells - and puts them back into dark boxes inside and pulls down the shutters: "Againnot one prophet has come to buy."
Translated by Y.A. and Ted Hughes
An Arab Shepherd is Searching for his Goat on Mount Zion
An Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zionand on the opposite mountain I am searchingfor my little boy.An Arab shepherd and a Jewish fatherboth in their temporary failure. Our voices meetabove the Sultan's Pool in the valley between us. Neither of us wants the child or the goat to get caught in the wheels of the terrible Had Gadya* machine.
Afterward we found them among the bushes and our voices came back inside us, laughing and crying.
Searching for a goat or a son has always been the beginning of a new religion in these mountains.
Translated by Chana BlochDrawings by Assaf Berg
* Lit. "Only one kid." A song chanted at the close of the Passover seder service, seen by some commentators as an allegory for the Jewish people.