Poems by Tali Cohen Shabtai
Gyur
I build tactics
While you sleep
On how to admit
To my crime
We make love
Between
Your Carnival
And my War
On a bed where
“The half of the wharf that is bleeding
Is the half where I always
Sleep”
I like your gestures but
I can’t take you
To portray Others
In my language
I can’t live like this
And you can’t either
There is no better
Deal
I failed to be
Loved.
* A person in the process of conversion
2
To my father’s surgeon
I’ve realized how it
works: It is announced that …
and it’s known all of a sudden! *
You know that suddenness has
an action plan that is comprehensive
and detailed – it’s
a strategy within itself.
When it (the suddenness) receives existence in a person’s
ears
it is experienced as a malicious trick indeed it has no
advance warning or alert before taking
action.
Did you know that I had to
dismantle this trick
of suddenness
On the 27th day of January, 2015
on the 10th floor
of hearts in question marks
under full anesthesia
and full monitoring
in waiting
very exact
for waiting for the
cardiology ward.
After all, the obvious suddenness
is no longer
understood
and has many consequences, it is the realization
that we are winning something that we
would not necessarily be entitled
to
when
my father is on the operating table
at a supervised temperature
at which
you bypassed the blockage with an
additional route
in his heart
and I could not
offer you assurances
at this time
my father!
And/
I was to the Traveler’s Prayer
and the chorus in the Book of Psalms, from “Blessed is the Man”
and to
the verse
“And all that he does will succeed.”
Did you know
that I have connected to every special quality
for any trouble that may
come
obsessively?
And I was for every letter
of the letters of your name
in Psalms
and I searched for any mention in those hours
of heredity
Did you know that my father has three
daughters of wonderful Semitic beauty
will you recognize my father in them?
When you operated
with this suddenness on father.
And is charity not just a theological term
for gratitude
to be
considered –
please accept this (from me), surgeon!
*Heart bypass surgery, decided on within three days of detection!
3
Platonic love
He was
Like an image to many
And to me like a man
Like a sound that has lost its way
Among cracked strings
And my heart desired
To be drawn closer.
Of love together
I was jealous
And where can I distill
My comfort thin
As it is
When I saw him only
Through a hidden peephole
And that was my only
Closeness.
4
***
I planted you,my love,I planted you
And how come what flowered was not what was planted/and the bearing dod not yet give birth
What was born
How come what did not wane could be weakened
And on the other hand,the trouble is.
And only into my life they husked this mix
Of how and why,the slips I saved
From your eyes.
5
Sisters
Immortality witness
For us.
Stored up in the heart of heaven forever
What was between
Us two.
And refined connection,purified
Of all harm
Looks out from the photographs.
Though our lives are portioned
To pieces of time,
Our existence is eternalized between
The volumes of diaries.
6
**
The scent of hollow pipe
Waves slowly through the crowded space of my
Room.
And the embroidered candlesestick placed
In its domain
Smooths over the chill –
The emptiness
And everything is so
Stifled
So
Personal
So chained one
To another.
