Last update - 00:00 20/01/2008
Friendship
By Agi Mishol
When everyone is at work
and the bees are buzzing themselves
further and further into the flower,
it is then that the silence descends on us
because we are good at that,
especially when the days are long and the ceiling low
when you put on the kettle
and I give you a leg up to the light
you speak, then, one word at a time
like a girl transferring chicks
and you are amused by the sort who discuss issues.
This is a love poem and you should know
that even if I am deprived of the magic wand of words
and I am become like sounding brass
or a ruined conch shell
very far from the rain, then, with you
I don't care.
Translated from Hebrew by Vivian Eden. Agi Mishol's long poem sequence about childhood in the 1950s, "Biqur Bayit" (Home Visit), appears in the latest issue of "Alpayim: A Multidisciplinary Publication for Contemporary Thought and Literature."