You Mustn't Show Weakness

You mustn't show weakness

and you've got to have a tan.

But sometimes I feel like the thin veils

of Jewish women who faint

at weddings and on Yom Kippur.

You mustn't show weakness

and you've got to make a list

of all the things you can load

in a baby carriage without a baby.

This is the way things stand now:

if I pull out the stopper

after pampering myself in the bath,

I'm afraid that all of Jerusalem, and with it the whole world,

will drain out into the huge darkness.

In the daytime I lay traps for my memories

and at night I work in the Balaam Mills,

turning curse into blessing and blessing into curse.

And don't ever show weakness.

Sometimes I come crashing down inside myself

without anyone noticing. I'm like an ambulance

on two legs, hauling the patient

inside me to Last Aid

with the wailing of cry of a siren,

and people think it's ordinary speech.

Translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell