Years I Walked at Your Side

Selected Poems

Mordechai Geldman, Tsipi Keller

• Publisher: Excelsior Editions
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781438472386
  9781438472379
• eBook ISBN:
  9781438472393
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern Poetry
• Index: Literature

The first book-length collection in English of this major Israeli poet.

Finalist for the 2018 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry presented by the Jewish Book Council

from "At Your Side"

Years I walked at your side

like our prophet Isaiah

barefoot naked and bare

I will put on no cover

until you see me

until you recognize an other

one person

at least

and so know yourself as well

Mordechai Geldman came of age as a poet in the seventies, an auspicious and transformative time in the development of modern Hebrew literature, as poets and writers rejected the flowery, the hyperbolic, and the sentimental and opted instead for a more direct and intimate speech. While his early poems tended to rely on linguistic exploration, his vision soon turned inward, as he came to favor the simple, the true, the authentic. Geldman's poems are direct and accessible, touching on and revealing the divine and the sacred in the so-called mundane.

from
New Poems
(2010)

Voice

What is his true voice?

Have words enfolded him

in murmurs

in forms

in worn-out patterns that came before him?

“Person” described him

better than “frog”

but the croaking of frogs in the night’s ponds

or the whistle of birds at dusk

or the sound of fruit dropping to the ground

drew him out better than Hebrew

as Being revealed itself to him in its fullness

And at moments of involuntary openness

when fatigue dissolved his inhibitions

Yiddish melodies floated up in his mind

songs of mournful wisdoms

of a cursed chosen people of God

tunes of an exiled truth and suffering

and the rolling of the dead*

And at times other voices

voices of others

sneaked surreptitiously into his secret cave

echoed in his voice and from within

infecting his voice with alienation

alien voices echoed in his voice simulating his voice

his voice at times getting lost in simulation

But was it really simulation

was there really a voice that was not his voice

as it used his mouth his palate his tongue his teeth

in order to set forth in the world

out into a vastness of odd-looking funnels

And wasn’t his voice muddled up

when adjusted to the auditory frequency of listeners

who had no intention to listen

and certainly never made the effort

and in fact never could

A suspicion rippled through him

annulling any pure sound

true like the roar of a river

virginal like the note of a reed

that has just been pulled from the edge of the swamp

or cruel and desirous like the wail of prairie wolves

But always an intense pain

an absolute final truth

whose voice was a scream or a shout

a voice distilled of dross

a voice of pure pain

pure voice of pain

four final words

and the song of wasps

in landfills

* Refers to the belief that when the Messiah arrives, Jews who had died in the Diaspora would roll under their graves, through tunnels and caves, to Israel for the Resurrection

Poems from Amirim

NOCTURNAL WIND

Winds clamored in forests

until they stormed like ocean breakers

and when stillness surfaced from the bottom

a puppy tried its voice

I who lay on my back in the dark

utterly impoverished

witnessed his existence

VASTNESS

When trees gently rustle

I exist in my familiar size

when trees erupt like the sea

I contract to the size of an ant or a leaf

the wind that gusts among the trees

asserts that we belong in the universe among galaxies

and the widening vastness is a wily witness

CAROB IN BLOOM

Its branches a crisscross composite

a grid of leaves flowers and bees

this is the dome of the temple

its scent a hormonal incense

wherein bees murmur prayers

anyone fearing his own passion

must not enter this temple

must not offer prayer to the goddess of fertility

in the company of heathen bees

FULL MOON

A slender chaste virginal moon

was born this evening at the edge of the sky

trembling like a bashful Muslim boy

yet it is not tonight’s moon

since a full moon

floats like a looking glass upon the dark valleys

its form born of my soul

and its glow

SPIRITUALITY

The spirit ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• I Wrote Write Will Write: Author’s Preface to the Hebrew Edition
• from New Poems (2010)
• from Tamir‘s Poems (2007)
• from Poem of the Heart (2004)
• from Oh My Dear Wall (2000)
• from Book of Ask (1997)
• from Eye (1993)
• from Milano (1988)
• Acknowledgments
• About Mordechai Geldman
• About Tsipi Keller
• About Ruth Kartun-Blum
• Index of Titles and First Lines
• Back Cover