See our feature on Robert Friend
and translations from Found in Translation: A Hundred Years of Hebrew Poetry
______
Selected Poems of Leah Goldberg
Sunset Possibilities and Other Poems
_______
All work copyright
© Jean Shapiro Cantu. All rights reserved.
_______
Email Jean Shapiro Cantu
Robert Friendfrom The Next Room (The Menard Press, London, 1995)
Breakage
Something is always breaking.
If not the heart, something else.
A tape rattles into silence.
A cup shatters.
Fragments yearn for each other.
Splice the tape,
glue the cup-pieces,
heal what you can
with spit and tears.
from The Practice of Absence (Beth-Shalom Press, Jerusalem, 1971)
Letter To P.
Help me to help your life
and so help mine.
Words! Words!
Your needs are children of a past
so strewn with murdered desires
that you must want and want
murderously.
I am willing to be
only a tongue speaking sincerely
the praise your life grows tall on,
the mirror necessary
to render your face its beauty,
your body its splendor,
a sun to light your moon
that otherwise rolls, cold stone,
in darkness, infinitely.
But where I stand
— outside your any recognition of me,
who also need a tongue, a mirror, and a sun—
I cannot help you.
Help me to help you.
I do not utter now
the word "love."
from Salt Gifts(The Charioteer Press, Washington D.C., 1964)
Exorcism
I know who's scratching at the door.
Clock, there's no use yawning.
More than boards are loose in the floor—
I wasn't born this morning.
Beneath your gurgle, Water Tap,
I hear the water slither.
I know you well, Barometer,
and all your inner weather.
Soap, you're not all lather,
and Cane, you're more than stick.
I know who hangs on you, Clothes Hanger.
I know you, wicked Wick.
I hear your silence, Telephone.
I know your meaning, Saw.
O wily, absent-minded Fly,
I've heard your voice before.
I have turned about thrice,
blinded the mirror,
snipped the end of my laces
with a rusty scissors,
trod on my shadow,
strewn on my pillow
three seeds of the fern
and a leaf of the willow.
Be gone, ogre of the Candle,
djinn of the grinning Fire;
be gone, harpy of the Lintel,
worm of the winding Wire.
Cerberus of the Threshold,
run howling through the town;
imp of the Ingle, shrivel;
nymph of the Mirror, drown.
Die, demon of the Cupboard;
fly, spectre of the Stair;
and die, you lean Clock's warden
who whispers in my ear.
