Two Poems

Gili Haimovich

Anger Sunk in a Lake

I've been crying like a fallen empire.
I don't have, nor had, words to be angry.
I've been crying like burning.
Now I'm crying like a filling lake.
Later they will become ashes
blowing from my eyes,
powdering my face in gray.

Long smiles on short cries.
Long thin days bandage thick wounds.





(Language)

I am tired as a wound covered over with skin.
Skin like a reassuring blanket,
that comes always, like a fulfilled promise,
when wounds go to sleep.

I prefer to be tired plain as a falling leaf.

My sadness is still and high as a mountain,
observes long distances,
but cannot reach them.

Like an omelet, my tears are everyday and salty.

The wounded mountain wants to be covered in leaves. Not omelets.
It's only natural, isn't it?

translated from the Hebrew by Gili Haimovich

Read the original in Hebrew

Listen to '(Language)' read in the original Hebrew by the poet:

Gili Haimovich is an internationally published poet. She has four volumes of poetry published in Hebrew: Lint Season (Pardes, 2011), My Forces Fire (Even Hoshen, 2007), Reflected Like Joy (Gavanim, 2002), and Contact Glue (Gavanim, 2001). In North America, her poetry collection Living on a Blank Page was published in two editions (Blue Angel Press, 2009). Her work is featured in North American journals, such as The Literary Review of Canada, TOK1: Writing the New Toronto, Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal, and Cahoots Magazine, as well as Israeli ones, such as Emda and Helicon.