Two Poems

Crossroads

All winter I didn’t write a poem, and I didn’t remember
even one dream that I dreamt. I left a house
and a wife, rented an apartment, and everything I needed
I found discarded along one road or another: bed,
table, shelves, refrigerator. It’s possible to say
that this was a wonder, an act of angels, as I stood
at a crossroads. It’s also possible not to think about it
too much. I cannot know a thing about
life’s questions, or to estimate what I found and how much
I lost. But all that winter I didn’t write a
poem, and I didn’t remember even one dream that I dreamt.

Simple Thing

There is no simple thing – from olive branches
do not make clubs. There is
no simple thing at all – from discarded stones
do not build a wall. There is no clarity in ease. Where
the house stood there is a little mound of dust,
and from the dust we came, as they say. It is no simple thing
to walk in another’s shoes.
But sometimes it seems that you
truly remember: the sheep,
the mosque,
the well.

Translations from the Hebrew
By Kevin Haworth