Memory of my youth
For Sima and Ephy Eyal

ELISHA PORAT

Poetry is a sudden process
of verbal compression.
I remember well one such illumination:
her father was a famous artist
who used to load his brush
with one bullet many --
to explode on the canvas with first touch.
He drew the beautiful head of his daughter
and shook his head with pity at my sweaty pages:
I feel for the two of you,
she doesn't know yet
that a poet is a continuous process
of the pain of existence.

Translated from the Hebrew by Tsipi Keler

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