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Like A Seal

1.
How little we need
to be happy:

a half-kilo increase in weight,
two circuits of the corridors
at Sloan-Kettering
in bedroom slippers
a morning without aspirin
silence gentle as a pit,
a distant
sand dune
behind the green bridge
a patch of lawn
and you beside me beginning
to knit a new sweater.

2.
The rhythmic movement
of the needles between your fingers
has something of the beat--ai-li
lu-lu-li--
sounds that live within a man
with all the other unrealities
not wiped out
in the massacres.





Death Is Not To Be Preferred

When leading a band of harried fighters
or standing face-to-face with the enemy,
holding out in the siege
and standing alone
on the ramparts,
he never said death is to be preferred,
that life is negotiable;
anxious
frightened
by severe privations
he never asked anything
of Almighty God
but to grant him favor
and ease his pain
when he leads the congregation
in communal prayer;
and forgive our sins
in love
and joy
and gladness
and peace
O God,
Mighty
And Awesome.

One Living Word

No more willful silences.
No more verbal contact,
he who loved to listen to so many
will never again hear his own voice among them.

He will sit with his friends over talk
from now on under constraint.
The talk. The thoughts. The friends.
And as he listens through
the secret door
he will turn his inner ear
to the dark mumur: Son of man,
all this
and all this
never was
and never will be
as good as
one living word.

The above poems are taken from Abba Kovner's Sloan Kettering translated by Eddie
Levenston.  Click here to read Alyssa Lappen's review on Abba Kovner's Sloan Kettering.

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