At the End
while I do my best to live as intimately with pain
as I did with love and passion,
At the end of the summer solstice days begin
to grow shorter, and this happens at the height
of summer, when all the fruits of the garden
ripen, even the forbidden, and their juice
drips in the absence of plucking. And books
of wisdom become wiser and less easy
to interpret, and lost wars become even more lost
in caves of time, and caravans of camels
wander between reason and rashness as if
their drivers forgot where they set out from
and where they are going. At the end of summer
solstice nights begin getting longer and the woman
whose beauty is stamped on my eyes dozes
on the couch facing the flickering screen
while I do my best to live as intimately with pain
as I did with love and passion, and when the doctor
asks me whether I entertain terminal thoughts I
am momentarily embarrassed before categorically
denying it, not to mention the fact that winter solstice
is still far away, and the cold, and the dark.
Moshe Dor, born in Tel Aviv in 1932, is one of the most prominent poets in Israel. The author of forty books of poetry, essays, interviews and children’s books, a recipient of the Bialik Prize, Israel’s top literary award, and twice winner of Israel’s Prime Minister’s Award in Literature, he is former President of Israeli P.E.N., Counselor for Cultural Affairs in London, and Distinguished Writer in Residence at American University, Washington, D.C.
Barbara Goldberg’s most recent book, The Royal Baker’s Daughter (University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), received the Felix Pollak Poetry Prize. She and Moshe Dor have published numerous anthologies of contemporary Israeli poetry, including After the First Rain: Israeli Poems on War and Peace (1998). The recipient of two fellowships from the NEA, Goldberg is Visiting Writer in American University’s MFA program.
