Yad Mordechai

Yad Mordechai. Those who fell here

still look out the windows like sick children

who are not allowed outside to play.

And on the hillside, the battle is reenacted

for the benefit of hikers and tourists. Soldiers of thin sheet iron

rise and fall and rise again. Sheet iron dead and a sheet iron life

and the voices all—sheet iron. And the resurrection of the dead,

sheet iron that clangs and clangs.

And I said to myself: Everyone is attached to his own lament

as to a parachute. Slowly he descends and slowly hovers

until he touches the hard place.

Translated by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld