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POET PROFILE
Eliaz Cohen   Eliaz Cohen
TRANSCRIPT
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From Poem of the Mountain Village
by Eliaz Cohen

English

Hebrew

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a.
my life is here
in my house which I dug
in the mountain

b.
I would walk
my face against the wind
one of the hallowed winds
of Gush Etzion
all the stone houses are like
boulders growing out of the earth
raising rock fetuses
children of stone.
I am not of stone, in me
all is recorded

c.
when the column of smoke becomes too black
I escape to
the study hall
rub my eyes
with two thin webs of silver

d.
I came to the study hall
there
two flames
webs of thin silver are billowing
everyone is bound on the altar here, on the mountain
the flames of silver whisper
Shalom Karniel enters
approaches, sits next to me
wants us to write a poem jointly
and his hand hovers over mine
almost coercing it to write
optimistic things
it's impossible to write poems jointly
I tell him
and he dissipates

e.
in the dining room
at evening
I see a smiling mustache
say the blessing over the warm bread
"Blessed art Thou, O Lord,
who brings forth bread from the rock"
and the aging winds whistle after him:
amen selah, amen rock

Snow  

Snow on bleeding Jerusalem
as though bandaging her wounds
all rests in tranquility now
filling the cracks of yearning in the Wall
children in your streets Jerusalem
the children of Isaac and Ishmael
are staging white wars
(and their blows are soft)

even the pigeons are hurrying today
cooing because they have found new footprints
on the way leading up to the Gate of Mercy

Translated from the Hebrew by Larry Barak. Reprinted from "Hear O Lord: Poems from the Disturbances of 2000-2006" with permission of Even-Choshen Publishers.

POET BIO

Eliaz Cohen is a poet and social worker who grew up in Elkana in the northern West Bank. He is a leading figure in the renaissance of religious poetry and arts in Israel and leads several creative writing workshops in the region.

Cohen is a founder and editor of the poetry journal "Mashiv Haru'ach" and is the author of four books of poetry. He lives with his wife and four children in the settlement of Kfar Etzion.

 

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