My poems are wrapped in darkness

ELISHA PORAT

Like a migrant Thai worker I pedal
my bicycle on the village path. Hunched over, dark,
my face covered against the dust. The dogs bark at me,
the bees slam into my forehead, and the scent
of a distant homeland assaults my nostrils.
And like his letters home, silverplating
the sweat of his brow, my poems too are wrapped
with the darkness that covers the land of my longing.

Translated from the Hebrew by Cindy Eisner.

Elisha Porat writes on a kibbutz in Israel.

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