WEBVTT

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These are two love poems
which are from a cycle called

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Achziv poems.

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Achziv is a very beautiful
spot near the Mediterranean

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in the North of Israel.

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And, now, it has-- in the '50s,
it was a marvelous place--

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quite free and open.

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Now, it has been, like so
many places in the world,

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it has been landscaped
and become a park.

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And, so, it's
perhaps cleaner now,

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but it has lost a
lot of its flavor.

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So, anyhow, it's
a very nice place.

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And I dedicated these poems
to the beautiful weeks

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I spent there many times.

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"In the afternoon, your one leg
was in the east and your second

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in the west and I in the
middle leaning on my forelegs,

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looking to the sides
with suspicion,

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rolling awfully lest
they take my prey for me.

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Who are you?

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A poor Jewish kid
from the diaspora,

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skullcap on the head
from fear from that time.

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All night, we are together.

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No heavy memories,
sticky feelings.

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Just muscles tensing
and relaxing.

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In another continent of time,
the dead rabbis of my childhood

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appear holding the gravestones
high over their heads bound up

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in the knot of my life.

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My God, my God, why have
you not forsaken me?

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