These are two love poems which are from a cycle called
Achziv poems.
Achziv is a very beautiful spot near the Mediterranean
in the North of Israel.
And, now, it has-- in the '50s, it was a marvelous place--
quite free and open.
Now, it has been, like so many places in the world,
it has been landscaped and become a park.
And, so, it's perhaps cleaner now,
but it has lost a lot of its flavor.
So, anyhow, it's a very nice place.
And I dedicated these poems to the beautiful weeks
I spent there many times.
"In the afternoon, your one leg was in the east and your second
in the west and I in the middle leaning on my forelegs,
looking to the sides with suspicion,
rolling awfully lest they take my prey for me.
Who are you?
A poor Jewish kid from the diaspora,
skullcap on the head from fear from that time.
All night, we are together.
No heavy memories, sticky feelings.
Just muscles tensing and relaxing.
In another continent of time, the dead rabbis of my childhood
appear holding the gravestones high over their heads bound up
in the knot of my life.
My God, my God, why have you not forsaken me?