Painful Birds

ELISHA PORAT

The helicopters, skillful, painful birds,
Again bombard targets above my head:
I sit shaking at my writing desk,
I bend down to my notebook, clench
My shaking pen. As if they know...
As if they sense an inner tracer, a red laser
Signal: they make another bomb run,
This time circling above my aging heart,
Who hastens to remove its rooms
And empty spaces as though they had become
Black tanks, easy targets, sluggish vehicles
Flooded by grief and suffering.

Translated from the Hebrew by Ward Kelley and the author.

Elisha Porat writes on a kibbutz in Israel.

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