cease fire. Let the bomb, the shell in mid-air, stop
among ricochets of splinters and the blast of shock waves
that draw the tongue of flame out a window
as if from the red mouth
of a juggler at the circus
spitting out fire, swallowing love.
2.
Seen from earth the lovers are brave parachutists, the enemy
firing on them while they drift in heaven;
like wild geese, they're halted, recoil momentarily, as in surprise.
A breeze touches my face and makes me say
one must build from scratch, behind the ruins, go down
on expectant knees to wait until the ruins are ashes,
until there are no towns, neither sacred nor profane, only
the dunes to begin from ashes.
And the lovers still drift, still float, alive, not yet touched by flames,
and the wind passes through the parachutes without stiring the ashes,
which are all there is to build with -- dunes of dark ashes like waves.
Now, when the slowly descending lovers set foot on the face
of the earth's foundation,
the wind will sift through the ashes.
Maybe then we can stand our ground.
Translated from the Hebrew by Henry Taylor