birthday

My daughter sleeps the sleep of waiting -
her breath, like little whirlpools of water
fills the darkness of the room -
she opens her face to the morning every
day, like a flower, unaware that her hair
curling like snakes, dances like embers in
shallow light - when walking she uses the
space of angels - it's only when her eyes
darken, with razor-edge green, that i
can see the ancient queen, she is to be.



by Nomi Ben-David

waarom

Wie weet waarom een vogel ineens opschrikt
en krijst in de stille nacht
of waarom een man uit het felle licht van
zijn droom ineens ontwaakt -
verblind, in het donker van zijn kamer staat;
sommigen onder ons staan er ongemerkt in
brand, in vertraagd vuur als waren de vlammen
koud - als herfstbomen in plotseling licht,
branden zij nooit geheel op


by Nomi Ben-David

Ausgesetzt auf den Bergen des Herzens

Wir, in den ringenden Nachten,
wir fallen von Nahe zu Nahe;
und wo die Liebende taut,
sind wir ein sturzender Stein.



Rainer Maria Rilke.

Night Meadow

Wide-eyed the rabbit in the green
looking to the hare on the face of
the moon - is it the cold, or fear
which makes her shiver? there's not
enough night, not enough darkness to
elope, - not a shadowfold to hide;
the predattors breath is on the air
when suddenly she jumps, - a white
dot of tail, zigzaging to the trees!
behind the bushes the foxes eyes,
lighten up, shine green and disapear!


by Nomi Ben-David, for Gaby.

Boomerang

writing a poem is very easy when you let it come to you, and you open the little door to that "room of changes", somewhere between the mind and the heart,
a word , a sentence or even a moment from a dream would not go away,
till i spend time to solve the puzzel put to me, - structure and rithme, the right words to a certain feeling, and then, very often the surprise towards
the end, something totaly unforeseen which comes out of nowhere, as
if to say, "you see now why all this needed to happen"?
needless to say, lots of it landed in the bin, - what i was left with, the little that stayed, needed getting used to, it often took time to understand what
my unconscious was trying to tell me...
yet with some very few things this would not work.
that is what happened with one small "set of words" written some years
ago, - i could'nt find one reason to why this came-up when it did...
sometime ago that little poem came back, boomeranging like a stone off
David's sling and strait to my heart...
unbeliveable as it sounds, poetry can be a dangerous thing sometimes.
should we believe in magic?
Federico Garcia Lorca did, and he forsaw things that happened...
i would'nt go too far with it. the advanture to me is not knowing what is
to come.


Neon

Pink hotel, angels sleep, dog looks for a tree,
man leaps out of window, hovers like a bee -
the air is dense with rain and it takes almost
one minute befor he hits the sidewalk - they
never told me his blood was blue, yet he is
royalty to me - for it's him who dared, not me.

by Nomi Ben-David

Capriccio

Behind each mirror
is a dead star
& a baby rainbow
sleeping.

Behind each mirror
is a blank forever
& a nest of silences
too young to fly.

The mirror is the wellspring
become mummy, closes
like a shell of light
at sunset

The mirror
is the mother dew,
the book of desiccated
twilights, echo become flesh.


by Federico Garcia Lorca
from Suites.

perfection

the tree in the backyard
surprises me, waking-up on
my birthday late saterday noon -
it stands there vibrating in
bright bridal yellow, it's crystal
atire flaring-up in the sun -
underneath it a perfect round
carpet of diamond-like leaves,
and as the wind does
not dare play it's novembery
hide and seek, not even the
ravens dare move the
hands of the clock, nor mutter
their complaint to the heron -
like him, on one foot, i stand
waiting a full minute - untill
one little yellow leaf, slowly
falls to the ground.

Of Three or Four in a Room

Of three or four in a room
there is always one who stands beside the window.
He must see the evil among thorns
and the fires on the hill.
And how people who went out of their houses whole
are given back in the evening like small change.

Of three or four in a room
there is always one who stands beside the window,
his dark hair above his thoughts.
Behind him, words.
And in front of him, voices wandering without a knapsack,
hearts without provisions, prophecies without water,
large stones that have been returned
and stay sealed, like letters that have no
address and no one to recieve them.

by Yehuda Amichai, frome "Two Hopes Away"
translated by Stephen Mitchel.

suburbia

the horrible wind has brought us together
on the outskirts of a city clad in night

cloud boats racing over glaring skies
the moon stalking us all the way home -

gasping for air we wake into the sunday
drink coffee, read the papers in our big

bed - later we go out, walk the dog, chain
the sun to the tree, so it would not elope

the neighbor, hatefull man, cuts it free
again and again - we did not ask for this!

monday the car breaks down, we wait for
the bus - the dog would'nt stay home, - sit!

that horrible wind once threw us together
this light summer breeze will tear us apart.

by Nomi Ben-David

a man named Oded

this blog is dedicated to the man who showed me how much fun
it is to play with words, how much they can mean to us and to others
who might read them - being a preformer, he made language come
alive in a way that stayed with me forever.
he tought me not to take myself, nor my writing, too seriouly, so being
a "radical" teenager i solemnly destroyed all i wrote every year at my
birthday, as to start all over again the next year.
this seems to have done me a lot of good, - just left me very curious
to what it might have been i wrote as a 14 year old ...
i hope to bring poetry, in english and in dutch, to this blog and maybe some actualitys and thoughts.
as i could never say goodby, thank you Oded, for all your care and fun!

Metamorf

I thought my aching heart should mend,
so I put it in a box, with a moonray
and a star, - later, when I opened it
again, in it I found some feathers of
a sandbird and a diamond, black like a
ravens eye - I put the feathers in my
hair, and found that I could fly -
the hardest stone of all I'll keep, to
serve me as evidence on the day I die

by Nomi Ben-David