Blood was originally black, but its color changed to red;
ink was originally red, but its color changed to black.
Abulafia
A freight train whose freight is an ocean unloaded sobbing into the night
Crocodiles on sand dunes grains on sidewalks beds
and blankets the sobs get under the skin the groans
tapping leaking because we are like that dripping honey and liquids
of venom and all the stars swallowed up into themselves like burn spots
coals of extinguished cigarettes and night’s sticky skin groans
and turns over it is hot in the rooms and the high rise buildings are graves with
ornate tombstones and the small ones are negligible tombstones in the garden of life trains
fleeing out of my veins groaning nothing can be that sad except a sob
that surges from the vanished distance within a silence of gigantic distances
that measure without words the solitude that is created from the crowdedness
of love that is close in time that is poured like oil into bottles
and the bottles are corked with time while they knead the bread of nerves and the tear of the wretched
suddenly pregnancies of night are opened like closets that vomit all the clothes
not like treasure chests that have deigned at long last to expose radiant diamonds
we write in the dark of night and the dark of blood on the surface of the brown dunes,
the gray dunes of the work-race for we are slaves we write on them
when the yellowish light and the azure rests on them lazy and how many acacia trees are scattered
carefully, maybe planted maybe wandering with the sand catching holding
for us all this black black that was poured when G-d created the world
he wrote in light on the dark of the deep and the spirit that was hovering
was also like a dove or bird and the throne of glory also hovered on the face of the waters
all still depended suspended and trembling a bit haughty from its platform we produce the
ink from the darkness of night from the darkness of blood that trickles within us from the subsoil of tears and try
to write the things whose radiance will fructify within us meanwhile more and more trains
are discharged into the night and there are those that sleep pleasantly during the time
when we hover above the bed and the bedding does not absorb us we do not
sink down we wait tensely for the moment when we will be taken the next day we are
tired scratched and not only the trains that flee into the night are sad
with the freight of the dead sea which is unloaded loads and loads of plundered treasures
even the white hills are poured out collapse into my brain mealy
and slightly muddy with all the dung-beetles the lizards the wormwood shrubs
and then in the morning the newspapers are poured out headlines headlines worms worms
creeping creeping as if we lived under the earth maggots and worms
as if underneath our bodies the turtles are floating alive which count death from the moment
of beginning and then come the train stations and the bus stops and the flour mills
that stand and move walk sit collapse around them amid the hills
the roving sleeping dogs are swallowed up are brought in at nightfall and the chewed remnants
were chewed long ago again in the factory of night I have news that will surprise you
it is good to die for ourselves even if it cuts you off in the midst of life even if
you’ve lost years it’s all the same if we are born for ourselves we’ll suddenly return
to the rooms that have forgotten us like the dusty mouths of the dead will open
in astonishment they’ll be confused for a moment whether to say hello or not for this one is long
banned we all trampled on him when he lay on the threshold we created a sweet environment
vague with the smell of cinnamon and roses and the sticky perfumes of the moment
butter compliments flattery and may there be no hope for informers someone in the coffee
house takes pains to explain to her friend how life will look with redemption with
children to raise the difference between solitude and insulation, isolation, I add
in my heart and as for this exile it is the difference between isolation and voluntary solitary meditation,
man, said Uri Zvi Greenberg, pulls it over his head like a lovers’ canopy
sharpen the ban upon you to an inner independent stand
and once again I start up from the graves someone else is seeking God if
he is not that is a mistake how can you write ethics that way she asks that is not a mistake
but an evasion someone answers her and I add in my heart those who write about
ethics in the face of God and about good management erase for esthetic reasons
what interferes with ethics I try to stimulate what died in me just now
I live in the great black expanses of the night
that is stretched out over the crowded white expanses of the passing hours and then
I wake up for the only moments when the transition from darkness to the pure
firmaments is absolute and clear in those moments all wanderings
are clarified for me I forget the cities from which I came and to which I go I
am cut off from the barrenness of solitude as much as from the barrenness of crowded
love I am a slave to orphans as well as to old people I am a slave to lovers as well as to haters
master of myself I am quiet bitter and impetuous closer to the woodpecker the cuckoo seeking prey
like the hungry cat of evening I am passing simply passing and when day takes off and climbs to the height
of the yellow-brown hills trampled under new highways the starved jackals
put on black suits some of them have neckties at the great conference table
they sit roll dice actively not like the depressed ones
who are still playing sheshbesh in the refugee camps, casting lots and I run with
my mealy porridgey brain that is becoming an erasable whiteboard after all poetry
is something that now and then dies and is buried and then stays does not come back is in
no hurry and you are silent are silent a servant of time you are a comrade to slaves of slaves your ages
are in time, your hells are in space, forgetting and memory are just interchangeable parts
sometimes this kind sometimes that and a lot of abyss that travels beneath and they stuff the cracks
they move or get stuck, they shed and shed most of the original limbs
and then suddenly in a moment it again scratches as if it lives it creaks beneath you as
a cart creaks that is full of sheaves the earth that bears you cracks
the mattress is broken the sheets are sweating she dug her own grave says
the weary tired monotonous voice she shot him right in the heart woman and man
man and woman sometimes in their solitude all their news moves in the tension between
dog bites man is not news man bites dog is news what is this monotonous
voice like a screech from another dream it penetrates together with the howling of the traveling jackal that has arrived
from the Dead Sea clattering with burdens that are out of this world chemical salts
and taxes poisoned time is expiring is spilt is spilt after all poetry is a wagon
train that collapses on the soft sand and it departs with no return whenever it
wants and then sometimes in a sticky night when you lie on your bed like a body foreign
to the environment detached from the bed of mulch you awake in terror howling
is sent to you this instant on order. Your soul, lonely to the point of terror, yelps like a she-jackal
crying abandoned sad the gold of dawns is muted suddenly it flashes in your silence
dawns grow radiant you take all this darkness of which you are made
and write dawns on the bluish screen of computerized dawns after all
you just are the dead salt sea which still dreams of fish “we are called on to collect
memories for a certain purpose” I am sinking. From the overload of sweetened
memories or from the overload of bitter realities perhaps from the fragments of unrealized
messianic time poetry too is a project of collecting and scattering even woolen threads are not
formed without beating we are broken in order to be repaired at every moment in which
the howling is heard the gap between you and the bed hardens becomes more
callous like wet clothes that have dried after being soaked in salt of the sea as if you float
on a salt sea of tears however tired you are you do not sink but recline
poetry is what travels from the darkness of the blood and to it and falls silent when things
are written in the ink of the blood of others in bitter realities the contemplation
of sweat of barrenness of aloneness then seems like an oppressive satiation, like a luxury,
the roaring of hunger that tears the veins is still sounding like a siren but its voice
is a weak noise of singing you are dead like the sea with all its drowned fishes and all
the plundered chemicals of your nerves there is a terrible dying in the slaughtered distances
you scream there is life that is robbed fences barriers corrals man all is
stuttering life is robbed you scream we are all lost
we are all remnants of dust and wandering sands
mothers and sons and sons and fathers seas and fish derailed freight trains
collapsing on the sand here we must defend people from themselves
whistles of all kinds of trains from all kinds of places drown out everything.
After all poetry is just something that stammers in a moment when a scream is required.
From the window the traveler with eyes wide open it looks at whoever writes graffiti
who does it better passing his judgment - do not dig graves for yourselves
you who write with man’s ink, which falls back into the sealed boxes
EN 
MK