Stone Snowy Mounds

ELISHA PORAT

Mounds of dead soldiers
Grow from the white snow,
From Yanta and Amiq, Meducha and Baruk.
Wintry freezing water assaults the streams
By the villages of Ein Zechalta and Ein Tzophar.

Among the blackened cedar palms,
The bulldozers raise rocks
Above the dead who lie under the snow.

The spring grass, the memory,
Suspends this siege on the mounds,
and tries to see who once lived but now
Lies under these melting waves of stones.

Translated from the Hebrew by the author and Ward Kelley

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