Poetry

Two Poems

By Saar Yachin
translated from the Hebrew by Alexandra Zelman-Doring

Hebrew version of the poem

Default

From time to time you’ll notice
everything dwindling. You’ll understand
depleted riches. You’ll prepare
a meager pinch of truth.
Buffaloed, you’ll find in it
chaff to trample, an udder to suckle.
Still unsated, you’ll eat the straw
of decadent insights you’ve recorded.
Their lines will raise a livestock fence
to fool you. Stupefied,
from time to time, between the lines,
you’ll see it’s gone, and will not get it.

 

Hebrew version of the poem "Disclosed"

Disclosed

A regime of winds:
fear, desire,
turned the pyramid I pictured
into a dune blown astray.
When it whistled across my hollows
I conjured a soul bird
mine
and danced to its tune
not expecting the many wry,
hungry woodpeckers that came
to pierce through
—many openings.
I did not count them.
My sands ran through to the last grain
shoring the hours to pass without me.

Saar Yachin has published four books of Hebrew poetry, and his poems have appeared in Hebrew newspapers and magazines. His latest book, Kitonot Vekabin, was published in 2016.

Alexandra Zelman-Doring is an award-winning writer, director, and actor. In 2005, she founded Throes Theater, whose plays have premiered in the UK and in the US. She is assistant editor of The Saint Ann’s Review.

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