My Hand Froze

My hand froze over my brushes

My eyes that had once lifted
beyond the graceful
curvatures of the window grille,

Hung in the tree foliage, and
did not resume sinking.

There clouds floated, came and went,
and on their back the tree drew for me with its branches

The forms my life wished to be.

 

And then,

Leaf after leaf turned yellow in a long fall,

Cats in the yard got pregnant and passed on, and people went

And diminished from my door,

The silence heaped on my ears

And the darkness on my eyes,

Even my hand on the stand was altered.

 

The bird that called me when I was a child

Came back.

With my legs quivering, I stood up from the chair

And opened the window.

A blue air river

Flowing infinite light

Burst into my room

And carried me.

Backward I still look at my corpse

Clinging to the thicket of the window

And I'm already flowing to there,
returning,
I Am  r e t u r n i n g !

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                 —End of 1993

 

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 Hebrew Translation

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