When I Arrived the Place Was
When I arrived the place was
Filled with dust. No signature
Of grass. Not
A single blade. A few grey trees
Stood here, there, shrouded
In sackcloth and dust. In my dream I saw
The rivers of my youth, the nights of my forests. Nowadays
Everything is green. In my dream I see
Filled with dust.
The poem is untitled, so we used its first line in our final version.
When I Arrived the Place Was
When I arrived the place was
Full of dust. Not a signature/sign/spot of lawn, Not even
A single stem. A few grey trees
Stood here, there, girded (khogrei)
In sackcloth of dust*. In my dream I saw
The rivers of my youth, the nights of my forests. Nowadays
Everything is green. In my dream I see
Full of dust.
* This is a biblical image denoting mourning – as in the Book of Esther, Chapter 4, line 4 (Context: Haman, the king’s prince, issued an edict commanding that all the Jews in Babylon be killed): ‘And in every province, whenever the king’s command and his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews with fasting and weeping and lamenting, and most of them lay in sackcloth and ashes’. TR replaced ‘ashes’ with ‘dust’. Yet, I expect most Israeli readers of this type of poetry would probably get the hint.