local_library Without A Eulogy

by Elisha Porat

Published in Issue No. 49 ~ June, 2001

What he wanted was

to hide among the simple

or among the small

whose greatness

he had always craved.

To be at rest with friends

cloaked in the pride of the meek without words,

and without even a eulogy.

And after that, only this:

To lie below tender shoots

sheltered in the shade of thorns

and to hear nothing

but Blackbirds singing.

* Translated from the Hebrew by Alan Sacks.

 

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Elisha Porat is a Hebrew-Israeli poet and writer. Many of his works have been translated into the English. This is his fourth poem in the poetry pages of Pif Magazine. This poem is taken from a poema, a group of a dozen lament–memory poems, which were translated from Hebrew into English by the author and the American poet Ward Kelley.