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Helen Bar-Lev
"...pink and
white and beautiful"
We have had a cold winter this year,
and it has snowed twice in the high areas of the country. We
also last week had an earthquake—a
tremor of 5.3 which caused the house to shake for quite a few
moments, perhaps even a minute. We here in the most Northern
part of Israel, right on the Lebanese border, were quite close
to its epicenter, which was in Lebanon. Israel sits on the
Syro-African rift and has known earthquakes in the past which
have been quite severe.
In our garden we are blessed to have wild anemones of all
colours blooming—the
latest is a dark purple. And also cyclamens. The country is
beginning to bloom now—the
wild almonds are blossoming and some of the fruit trees are also
beginning to blossom, pink and white and beautiful. Artistic
inspiration indeed!
Johnmichael and I are currently finishing work on the Voices
Israel 2007 Annual Anthology. It is the largest ever, about
250 pages. If you would like to order a copy, please email me:
hbarlev@netvision.net.il.
Voices Israel is having an out-of-the-ordinary get together
Sunday, the 24th of February, 25 members of the Carmel Choir
will be singing and some of the Voices Haifa group will be
reading their poems. It should be wonderful...
The winners of the Tom Howard Poetry contest have been
announced. I am proud to say that Johnmichael Simon won third
prize for his poem: "To Sing The World".
To Sing the
World
Each language has
its own music
And those who sing it are its harmonic true
From opening bars they recognize each other
They are as staccato to legato
As guttural is to milk
As icebergs from lagoons
They smolder and hiss as fire steams from water
As plucked guitars from tom-toms beating smoke
Consider: a flurry of Italians
Accellerando agitato as spaghetti around spoon to mouth
Ignitable as Latin is to love
And there, a day or two across the water
The dulcet tones of le Fran?ais, cedillad and accented
As accordions in the street
Each syllable a mistress, douloureux or sweet
Listen to Greece, her tongue all olive oil and X’s
Proud as phrases carved on ancient stones
Bouzoukis lilting linking arms stepping foot after foot
Around breaking plates, while at a wooden table sits
Pythagorus counting his magic numbers
Discoursing on the healing music makes
Consider isiXhosa: fifteen different click sounds
The poetry of ancestors and dreams
Hear the language of night people, phantom figures
They close their eyes, surrender to the music of the stars
Consider translations: often golden words of beauty, works of
art
Masterly forged doubloons that subtly miss the mark
True at times to libretto, timbre, image or melody. Never all
Listen to those that cry rivers, raise voices in anger or
regret,
Argue in tones of bedlam, discordant and strident as Babel
Each striving to drown out the other
As across the sky a wild goose cries in Esperanto
Flying from tongue to tongue honking from land to land
Aliaj vivoj. We touch their wings, listen
Begin to understand
Each of us has his own music
We swirl with each other, against each other, over our green
globe
In choreographies of dissonance and pride
We chant the languages of tribes with cymbals, swords or
scimitars
Our words betray us, cascading from a past we cannot hide
Consider the language of flags: each emotion, each devotion,
Each declaration of respect or honor, each hymn an anthem
To divide us
[Consider the music of ants on leaves
The language of grass growing
The sounds of desert winds blowing]
Each language has its magic, its memories
Its palaces and echoing ballrooms
Its secret passageways, its trysts and feuds
Our voices twist and twirl around themselves
Each in its own cadence, temperament, rhythmic beat and break
The music of our world, vowels flowing around continents
Like chocolate snakes
Listening carefully, we discern
Melodies that slip between the words
The music of children playing
The things that whales are saying
The music of old age praying
Cadenza, coda, final?
© 2007 Johnmichael Simon
My poem
"Patterns of Breath", won a high distinction award in the same
contest.
Patterns of
Breath
It is evening and
chilly and I am walking home
standing now at the intersection of Agron and King George
I wait for the traffic lights to change
engaged in nothing more intellectual
than observing the patterns my breath makes on the night air
An ambulance streaks, its sirens hysterical
an over-hormoned motorcycle blasts,
a moving van huffs loudly with the strain of its weight
and the reluctant-to-change traffic light permits me
to take in this vehicular confusion
I am about to cross over to Paris Square
where the women in black stand every Friday,
demanding peace from Jerusalem’s stone ears,
when my eyes are drawn to the left, the east
down Agron Street, past the taxi stand, past the Italian
convent,
the American consulate, the Isiah House monastery,
the bicycle repair shop, the Moslem cemetery
towards the silhouette of the Old City
And there emerging from the rooftops is a full, pale orange moon
so huge my perspective is skewed
I mistake it at first for a street lamp or spotlight gone dim;
it is special, exquisite, gossamer
as though hiding its shyness behind a veil
The traffic light has not yet changed –
I want to tap the man next to me, to phone a loved-one, to share
my awe
I will the sirens to be silent, the vehicles to disappear;
it is a sacrilege to view this moon amidst the heavy noisy
traffic as I now do
I need to be alone with this orange moon,
perhaps on a mountain top, with blackness and serenity
surrounding me
perhaps on the seashore, to see it reflected in the water
or in the forest, tucked into trees, snug in Nature,
I need to breathe this moon into my being,
to hold onto this beauty forever
The traffic light has now realized it is time to change;
I cross the street and tuck the moon inside my special file
of marvelous memories
and wonder if any other person in haste to get someplace
has paused for a moment to behold this moon
mystical, graceful, rising magnificent over Jerusalem
© 11.2004 Helen Bar-Lev
and "From This Desk" won a highly commended award
From This Desk
From the desk at
which I sit
and bring beauty
through these hands,
this brush,
onto the paper
into the world,
the corner of my eye
observes the wind
flip flop a tablecloth
on the other side of my heart,
a friend whose son is dying,
a poet who had a breakdown
during army reserve duty,
another who has just had
a difficult diagnosis
in my painting, human-free,
the North abloom,
mountains regal in the background,
pine trees and peace,
sky blue with optimism,
ground green with eternity
on the radio
a six-year-old Mozart
is wooing my heart
whom do I fool?
a world in pain
paradise so close to a hostile border
that, if you listen, you will surely hear
the mortar shells falling
am I permitted the peace
which creativity gives
yet compassion prevents?
I sign the painting
a month in the making
and hurt for the world
© 2.2006 Helen Bar-Lev
Below are the poems
which won first prize in last year's Reuben Rose
Annual Poetry Competition. The judge was Doug Holder of Ibbetson
Press and
many other poetry goings-on, of Sommerville, MA, USA, who also
came to
Israel to hand out the prizes and give workshops in December, as
I reported then.
1st. Prize Poem:
Fish Eye
by Zvi A.
Sesling, MA USA
Once, in the home of
a Filipino, I was
served soup with the head of a fish floating in the middle, the
eye
staring
up, the same as in a pile of the dead at Auschwitz, the center
of the
eye
forming
a question mark asking, Why me? Why am I here? What have I done
to earn
this
infamous
plight? The eye doesn't see, yet it tells of surprise, shock,
fear,
anguish
and pain,
not love, happiness or humor. The eye has seen too much, not
enough.
Questions are answered, question remain. In the end humanity
consumes fish, consumes humanity.
2nd. Prize Poem:
Paris Unsaid
by Celia Merlin
I sent my boys off
to Paris today.
Twenty-two and twenty,
the same age as I,
when captured by
the Seine's rainbow twinkle,
Elysees' grandeur. They are cynically young, from
press keys and wires,
with gadgets literally
out of their ears. They will turn the same corners,
eat the same bread;
their boundless dreams,
though well-hidden,
as green as mine at that time.
Anxiously I wait to see how they fared
away from their text message world. Will they feel autumn slide
through
the narrow back alleys?
Will they smell lovers' sighs in small dim cafes?
Will their sneakered feet remember
the cobblestone, worn and uneven
from horses past and sports cars present? Will they tell of
glances and
blushing
and wet autumn leaves and cool white marble,
of ponds, round and shallow with toy boats that float
as children jump past with their plaid woven scarves and
their small yapping dogs? I have walked them to school-
these two young men.
I have taught them to swim and to drive.
But I can't help but wonder and worry a bit—
have I taught them to hear what's unsaid?
3rd. Prize Poem:
72 VIRGINS
by Reuven
Goldfarb
—an arrow in the
heart of the Intifada—
"Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave
a paradise for a sect…."
Keats, "The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream"
When you complete your mission
and arrive in the place of Judgment,
you will be greeted
by seventy-two beautiful virgins
who won't like you.
They'll talk only to each other,
form hostile little cabals,
engage in whispering campaigns
to discuss your every earthly peccadillo,
and, most of all, mock your ambition
to be honored as a martyr.
No martyr, they will say, ever won his crown
by murdering innocent people
You lost your life in vain.
4th. Prize Poem:
Passions
by Wendy
Blumfield
The music teacher
said sing silently
And not to let my voice`s passion soar to the sky
A voice that held no tune. The dancing teacher said go home you
are a
waste
of space
As in passion arms reach to the sky
And my plump overweight little legs march on. My grandfather
gave me a
little
wooden desk
And I wrote my passions in ink
That stained my fingers and spilt down my white school blouse.
God gave
me
four children
And I fed them with passion
From those plump overweight breasts
Sang them to sleep with the passion
Of my voice that held no tune
And danced with them with passion
through the autumn leaves
And the joy of the windswept beach.
Helen Bar-Lev,
Artist, Poet
Editor-in-Chief,
Voices Israel Anthology
www.helenbarlev.com
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