Two Poems

Gili Haimovich

Anger Sunk in a Lake

I've been crying like a fallen empire.
I don't have, nor had, words to be angry.
I've been crying like burning.
Now I'm crying like a filling lake.
Later they will become ashes
blowing from my eyes,
powdering my face in gray.

Long smiles on short cries.
Long thin days bandage thick wounds.





(Language)

I am tired as a wound covered over with skin.
Skin like a reassuring blanket,
that comes always, like a fulfilled promise,
when wounds go to sleep.

I prefer to be tired plain as a falling leaf.

My sadness is still and high as a mountain,
observes long distances,
but cannot reach them.

Like an omelet, my tears are everyday and salty.

The wounded mountain wants to be covered in leaves. Not omelets.
It's only natural, isn't it?

translated from the Hebrew by Gili Haimovich