Aharon Shabtai
© 1987, Aharon Shabtai
From: Love
Publisher: Am Oved, 1987
LOVE
1.
I’m a man
who murdered love
simply
and with his own two hands
took
and snapped its neck
like a lamb
and then, with his fee,
his slaughterer’s fee,
promptly turned
into
a groisser hocham
– a wise ass –
wise at night
and wise on his ass
– and so
there’s Cain and there’s Abel
and Joseph and Deborah
and Hamor the Shechemite
and finally
a kind of Aharon Eichmann
wandering around
with –
stuck
in his back pocket –
all five scrolls
Lamentations and Ruth
The Song of Songs
and so on
but waiting
for the firing squad
it’s sublime
my eyes
blinded by tears
to take the ringing
bullets
like the 5
stars of The Bear
I pronounce
life
an act
of suicide
The New Testament
means
die and die
I can’t be
more specific
there’s no one
(truly no one)
to whom I’d explain
the specifics
and whoever there is
to lend an ear
and listen
anyway
turns to nothing
I’m sobbing
over a neck so white
– it’s unbelievable,
unbelievable –
I swear
a neck as white
as this one
has never existed
I told her:
D., even if they cut off your legs
(I called them “chips”)
I’ll love you
It was, in fact, a vow . . .
You know how far I’d go with her?
Even into apostasy
even into the PLO
I’d –
so I told her –
plain and simple
and all night
(every night)
kiss you
and I’m
entirely capable
I mean it in all seriousness
of carrying out
just such a total kiss
I’m a man
who, gradually,
has learned
the arts of love
I never
once betrayed my wife
(before the marriage I went
two or three times to whores)
and that’s it –
afterwards
year after year,
patiently I’ve learned
patience
I’m able,
how should I put it,
to care for
to care for any
creature requiring care
i.e.
I take into account
when I stare
at my beloved
the infant
the elder
(the entire design)
and the ill
which follows
from the healthy
and the foul
and the exhausting
and the recurrent
(which is to say:
The Law)
so instead of saying
“D., look –
here’s the mezuzah,
bore
the awl through my ear”
kept to the fence
year after year
I’ve barked and barked
at your beauty
I remember a poem
by Alcman –
on Astymeloisa:
“Astymeloisa
won’t answer me”
(ouden ameibetai)
“but she holds a garland,
she’s like a bright star
cut out of the sky”
and he adds
“like a golden bough,”
etc. (what a wonderful
poet)
you – Astymeloisa!
my heart’s broken
with saying
(entirely despite myself)
that your nipples
are like thorns
why would
nipples of thorn
suddenly
shatter
a grown man’s life?
and why
didn’t you listen
when I said:
D., come with me –
leave your husband,
for me, a man
who, from a mop
can trick
200 golden proverbs?
Half the night
I can’t fall asleep
(from desire)
my balls are sore
but I won’t beat off
thinking of Ixion
whom Zeus forgave
and took up
into the sky
where he fell
in love with Hera,
was deceived,
and inseminated
the goddess –
it was only a cloud
and in the end
he was bound to a wheel
for all eternity
like me
bound to the wheel
of thinking –
bound to your name.
5.
From infant I’ve
turned into a fat man
my hair’s going gray
and becoming a kind of
useless rag
when I eat
I run my tongue
along my dentures
on the other hand
I’m awfully young, and funny,
cordial, my hands are good
erotic – in the ancient sense,
the daemonic –
and my back is strong
despite one lousy disc
I strained when, once,
I picked up a stone idiotically
My brother’s tanned legs
(he boasted of, philandered with)
are long since eaten whereas mine
mine are o.k. – last night I even dreamed
I was called in to play fullback
unfortunately my scrotum’s shot
(once it’d shrink up in the cold
like a crop)
and my penis I admire
fascinated by its white liquid
I’ve learned in my life to use it wisely
and your belly is like a levelled bowl
and at its tip are leaves of laurel
© Translation: 1997, Peter Cole
From: Love
Publisher: Sheep Meadow, 1997
ISBN: 1-878818-78-3
Post je objavljen 02.09.2005. u 00:11 sati.