Two Poems

Go Thee

And the way you gathered up your excess soul
before it spilled to the floor.
At the end of the Hebrew-Yiddish-English poetry reading
and you went to eat shawarma.

The way you gathered up your soul,
but didn’t hold it too tight,
because too much of something isn’t a treasure,
because your fatigue is also excess.
And the music drilled too much into both of them,
and your eyes became stars in the night of the assorted 
audience.

Too many have left you,
cities.
You have no intention of loving this one too.
You’re not enhancing the green twists and turns of her heart
in your walk.
Stomping on them.

Go, go, after the words,
the body too will become aerodynamic,
a weightless airplane following
after the weighty words.
Go, move, fly or breathe,
from your country, from your people, your fatherland, 
your mother’s language,
so you become a great nation, a small blessing.
Go, move, fly, roll away or breathe,
from moving matter to thinning air.

The Female Of

The beginning of spring
A maple tree sighs
(The despair blossoms)
Chrysanthemums roar (“more, more”)
The crow is so naked under his feathers,
so naughty.
The sky refuses to blush
to the light of the eclipsing sun.
Spring, the female of the cold,
the Nakba of the winter.

Translations from the Hebrew
By Dara Barnat