DORIT WEISMAN

DORIT WEISMAN

TEA

On our forty-first wedding anniversary

we did not lie down together

nor did we leave the house.

It was Shabbat (it was yesterday)

and raining. Clouds.

A friend dropped by.

For the first time you wore the purple sweater

The new one from England

And our younger son’s sweat pants.

I made you tea.

Not with a tea bag, verbena and mint

From a pot on the balcony,

Lemon and honey.

TRANSLATION FROM HEBREW TO ENGLISH: JOANNA CHEN

AFTER TWO CATHETERIZATIONS

Shabbat morning, the street is silent

I stroke your back

Lingering over the valleys between your shoulder blades

We do not mince our words in the act of love

And we have our own ways

But now your heart is different.

It has five metal stents

Along two coronary arteries

The ivy leaves outside redden

I listen to your every breath

Anxious you do not exert yourself

I want you for many more years

Smooth and muscular and beneficent as you are now

As you always were

Following me through the desert for forty years.

Later, by the kitchen sink, naked

Together peeling potatoes for the oven—

The grandchildren will soon be here.

TRANSLATION FROM HEBREW TO ENGLISH: JOANNA CHEN

 

LIST OF MY PASSIONS AND SIDE DISHES

Herring. Sex. A good book of poetry.

A pub, beer, a blues singer.

Dipping bread into leftover gravy.

I wrote these lines at breakfast time

later there was honey

on my nipples

which you licked

honey everywhere

light streaming through glass bricks.

Later there was silence

I lay among bread crumbs

my hair dipped in leftover

oil and herring.

TRANSLATOR: DORIT WEISMAN AND VIVIA EDEN

DORIT WEISMAN:

Ms. DORIT WEISMAN lives in Jerusalem, Israel.  An award-winning poet with international repute. A multidimensional writer, she is also a novelist, a translator, an editor, a film-maker and a literary organizer. Recipient of the International Poetry Prize Alfonso Gatto 2016 (Salerno, Italy), the respected Yehuda-Amichi Prize for Poetry and the Prime-Minister Prize for Israeli writers, 2003. She published 10 volumes of poetry, one prose book, one translation book (poems of the writer and poet Charles Bukowski) and she is the editor of an Anthology of Israeli Women Social Protest Poetry – "The Naked Queen". Her poems have been translated to many languages: English, Italian, French, Spanish, Turkish, Arabic and more. She is the founder and editor of the Poetry Program in the Israeli TV (Channel 98), which runs several times per week.