Alwayswriteagain: I Have Moved!

Alwayswriteagain: I Have Moved!:  A series of Google Blogger technical hitches have caused me to move on. I may now be found at: https://nataliewood.substack.com/ where deta...

Young Lives Dished up on a Silver Platter

As luck would have it, the conclusion of Israel's spring festive season coincides neatly with the last week of Global Poetry Writing Month.

Like everywhere else, the Corona pandemic means public events and general social interaction are happening mostly online in Israel.

Now almost routine were last night's streamed Yom Hazikaron - Day of Remembrance activities - that locally to me also included a Zoom study session based on The Silver Platter by Natan Alterman, a much loved patriotic work regularly read and discussed at this period.
Also typical, I suggest. of the frenzy of Israeli life in almost all aspects, is that the site to which I provide the link offers not one but four optional English translations of the original Hebrew. As three are anonymous, I reproduce the first by David P. Stern.

…And the land will grow still
Crimson skies dimming, misting
Slowly paling again
Over smoking frontiers
As the nation stands up
Torn at heart but existing
To receive its first wonder
In two thousand years
As the moment draws near
It will rise, darkness facing Stand straight in the moonlight In terror and joy

...When across from it step out
Towards it slowly pacing In plain sight of all A young girl and a boy
Dressed in battle gear, dirty
Shoes heavy with grime
On the path they will climb up
While their lips remain sealed
To change garb, to wipe brow
They have not yet found time Still bone weary from days And from nights in the field
Full of endless fatigue
And all drained of emotion
Yet the dew of their youth
Is still seen on their head
Thus like statues they stand
Stiff and still with no motion And no sign that will show If they live or are dead
Then a nation in tears
And amazed at this matter Will ask: who are you? And the two will then say
With soft voice: We--
Are the silver platter On which the Jews' state Was presented today
Then they fall back in darkness
As the dazed nation looks And the rest can be found In the history books.

© Natalie Wood (28 April 2020)

HOW THE CORONA PASSED OVER

My kids spent Corona Passover wandering like Arameans,

skipping upstairs and down, inside and out, playing the

goat, waving and blowing safe kisses at Gran

on social media.

My kids spent Corona Passover like a lost flock of sheep,

wagging their hands like the tails of spring lambs,

begging Bo Peep to find them.

Oh, my sons, my abandoned sons.

Oh, their new-born brother.

Oh, my darling girl.

Oh, my sons’ absent mother!

© Natalie Wood (20 April 2020)

Passover Super Moon 2020

(With apologies to Yip Harburg and Billy Rose)

Is it really a super moon

floating over a bloated sea

lighting a way to save dear

souls if they’d believe in me?

We are together as we’re apart

on each side of a toughened

glass –

forever entwined in a

wondrous web -

if you’d believe in me.

Masked but  naked,

enslaved by drudge,

we may live as free men yet,

if you'd believe in me.

© Natalie Wood (12 April 2020)

Passover in a Year of Modern Plague

Passover in a Year of Modern Plague

"What's true of all the evils in the world is true of the plague as well. It helps men to rise above themselves”.  (Albert Camus, ‘The Plague’, June 1947).

Blood

In a time of plague,

 I watch the carnivals of hate

roll by, but won’t participate.

I shop. But fixed on red alert,  

I hide behind my Purim mask, now

sanitised; advise the salesman

that my purchases are few.

Frogs

Perhaps something cooling

for a head that’s spawned

heaped coals on fire and

other stuff that’s extra soothing

for a throat shot through with

knives.

Lice

Once, my distracted mind insists,

on days like this, an ancient

king’s wise fool dared throw

the apple of his eye,

not on him, but at a mystic

man of science’s brow.

A-tishoo! A-tishoo! I can’t

buy a tissue. I must lie down.

Flies

Here’s time for holy

men to find martyrs many,

but forbidden to heal by touch,

their rooms are deserts –

lie arid, empty.

Pestilence

A Catholic Father clings to Jesus;

 What’s sickness, mine? What’s gone

amiss? Rav Mazuz bursts gay

folks’ pride. ‘Your way is community suicide’. 

                    

Boils

Blind granddad is a tailor,

he sews at Alum Rock.

Sleek rats squat on his windowsill

tho’ he’s cut from finest cloth.

Hail

‘Hail’ – which may also

speak ‘farewell’ - come near –

but not too close – we’re all in this

together - but apart.

 All borders shut. So let us,

rather, gather at safe

distance on our balconies.

There, we whistle, stomp and

cheer ‘hurrah’ in humble thanks

to those who work to save us now.

Locusts

No swarm of guests to lean

left about my heirloomed table.

No rosemary for remembered rue,

Instead, twice dipped, our new enslavement

will be forever etched in lineal pain.

Darkness

Sand burdened winds scythe

unwary heads.  Forsaken

streets expose unblinking eyes atop

shuttered public places, sacred spaces

that shed unwonted tears as mustard-muddy

clouds scud by.

Killing of the First Born

No blood-streaked lintel, no

fragrant hyssop helps. God’s

messenger arrives to take his tithe.

Once only a kid, an enfeebled lion

learns he is to roar no more,

his work on earth is done.

So too, here, is mine.  

© Natalie Wood (24 March 2020)

PerfectlyWritePoetry: Seaside Pastiche

PerfectlyWritePoetry: Seaside Pastiche: This piece was prompted by a multi-site visit to the northern Israeli coastal resort of Nahariya arranged by the Nefesh B’Nefesh immigration...

Seaside Pastiche

This piece was prompted by a multi-site visit to the northern Israeli coastal resort of Nahariya arranged by the Nefesh B’Nefesh immigration aid organisation.

The trip started at the town’s striking octagonal water tower that has served as an art gallery since 2003 and has been hosting a show by prize-winning crochet portrait artist, Orly Ben Basat.
There were also stops at the Lieberman House Museum that was restored in the 1990s and the home-based studio of Judaica fabric artist, Adina Gatt.
---------------------

A white tower’d gallery

by a river near the sea

frames women, three.

Sweet waters run softly till they end their song.

Slipped tight behind

mud-fogged glass,

time honours all

who’ve In these ancient

waters passed.

Why do they yet mourn

by God’s slim river, now

we’ve regained Zion?

Full fathoms five,

neither blind to the magic,

nor deaf to the melody,

see the needle-pointed

pearls that are their eyes,

those knitted brows.

Hark that silenced chargrilled

voice; a patterned arm.

Look how that behatted,

urchin charm plays on.

This falling house never

fell; no girl bathed

upon its bridal roof;

no royal watcher

gloated on the

embroidered truth.

Sweet waters run softly till they end their song.

Cry me a river!

Don’t laugh at

my belief in man;

at my belief in you,

little river.

Cry on, tho’ your

waters meet the

sea and herein ends

this song.

--------------------

© Natalie Wood (12 April 2019)

Alwayswriteagain: Why Israelis Love ‘Green Bóok’

Alwayswriteagain: Why Israelis Love ‘Green Bóok’: It is no surprise that Peter Farrelly’s hit movie Green Book continues to delight Israeli audiences: The real story behind it has ...

’Boy’ or ‘Boss’: Water Keeps a Hit Movie ‘Green’!

If there’s a song whose meaning I’ve always misconstrued, it’s those of the  American folk melody, Water Boy.

I first heard it sung in a satirical version by American Jewish comedian, Allan Sherman. But even later, hearing the real lyrics, I mistook them as a call to the cotton field workers’ own slave – the abused child who brought them water during their labours.

I could not have been more wrong!

According to contributors to Lyrics Mode it is a prison work song and the prisoner, doing hard labour, laments how his bad luck gambling in card games has cost him ‘silver and gold’ – along with his liberty. The singer is either calling for the water boy to bring him water or is telling the guard, whom he calls ‘boss’ how hard he's working and that he's the best worker on site. It is suggested further that the word ’boy’ is mistranscribed from the original and should be ‘boss’.

There are innumerable versions of Water Boy, with fans claiming a wide range of musical references encompassing classical composers, a Jewish marriage song and a Native American tune.

The song and the many artistes who have covered it have enjoyed renewed interest with the release of the movie, Green Book as The Don Shirley Trio recorded a most compelling instrumental version.

-----------

Water boy, where are you hidin’

If you don't come right here

Gonna tell you pa on you

There ain't no hammer

That's on a this mountain

That ring like mine boy

That ring like mine

I'm gonna bust this rock boy

From here to the Macon

All the way to the jail boy

All the way to the jail

You Jack o diamond

Jack o diamond

Know you of old boy

I know you're of old

You rob-a my pocket

Rob my pocket

Silver and gold boy

Of silver and gold

There ain't no sweat boy

That's on a this mountain

That run like mine boy

That run like mine

© Natalie Wood (18 February 2019)

Of the Burning of Jewish Books There is No End …

Two men, two women.

Four modern Hebrew poets whose work has had such a profound impact on Israeli life and culture that their verses are sung in kindergartens while one has given a name to a recent war.

What’s more, observed Dr Eli Ben Joseph addressing the English speakers group at the Emet Veshalom Progressive Synagogue in Nahariya, northern Israel, it is thrilling to note that Rachel Bluwstein – known universally as ‘the poet Rachel’ – was the first woman to write in Hebrew since the biblical judge, Deborah.

Dr Ben Joseph, a US-born Israeli of 44 years standing, who taught English as a foreign language at the Western Galilee College near Acco, also examined the work of Leah Goldberg, Yehuda Amichai and Chaim Nachman Bialik, who is regarded as Israel’s national poet.

As present-day Israel is still the home of the ‘People of the Book’, it is difficult to exaggerate what has been described as the ‘mythological ‘status’ of personalities like these four:

There are signposts to the cemetery near Lake Kinneret in Tiberias where Rachel lies. Bialik’s Tel Aviv house, converted into a museum, is a major tourist attraction while streets, a moshav and a suburb of Haifa are named after him. Goldberg, like Rachel, is among four poets featured on Israeli banknotes while it is said that Amichai is the most translated Hebrew language poet since King David!

But here I would like to examine an aspect of Bialik’s life not touched upon either by Dr Ben Joseph or former UK MP and broadcaster Michael Portillo, who featured the poet in his BBC documentary, Rail Journey in the Land of Israel, and that was screened last night for an ESRA Karmiel crowd.

It is something I thought about in relation both to the ‘Kaddish’ prayer protest in London last month and historic rows in world Jewry from biblical times onward.

The poet was born into a traditional Orthodox Jewish Russian family and studied at Talmudic academies in Russia and Lithuania. But as a young adult he drifted away from the life for which he had been prepared and it appears that there were those in ultra-strict circles who viewed his later activities as behaviour somewhere between gross disrespect and brazen treachery.

So they burned his books!

Bialik wrote in Yiddish as well as Hebrew, so it is not clear from what I have read what caused so much animus among the ultra-religious. I would welcome input from anyone who reads this feature.

Meanwhile, in view of the innumerable anti-Jewish book burnings that have occurred in history, it is hard to over-dramatise the malice that may inspire one set of Jews to thus destroy another Jew’s work on a matter of so-called religious principle.

But it is clear that Bialik’s stature and legacy prove he had already won the argument almost without breaking into a sweat. He continues to be regarded as Israel’s best known, most loved literary giant while his enemies lie as dust and ashes, their work forgotten – except in relation to him.

© Natalie Wood (05 June 2018)

file:///C:/Users/TOSHIBA%207/Documents/google7b1e3628061325f1%20(1).html

Alwayswriteagain: The Music and Murder of Trees

Alwayswriteagain: The Music and Murder of Trees: As Israelis celebrate Tu B’Shevat - the biblical ‘birthday for trees’ - residents of the leafier suburbs of Sheffield, Yorkshire, England a...

כתיבה וחתימה טובה

Very best wishes for a sweet and successful 5778 to all who are celebrating the Jewish New Year.

Natalie Wood and Brian Fink (Karmiel, Galilee, Israel).

(© Natalie Wood (17 September 2017)

Yes: Far Too Soon to Say Goodbye!

As we mark the bi-centenary of the death of novelist, Jane Austen scholars still debate its cause.

Was it tuberculosis, cancer, Addison’s disease or – as most recently suggested – arsenic poisoning that killed her aged    only 41?

We’ll never know the full truth. But I reflect on this as I consider the coincidental passing of Ukrainian dissident poet, Irina Ratushinskaya as the modern writer also died far too young, aged only 63.

While the immediate cause was cancer, Ratushinskaya’s constitution had been irreversibly damaged by her incarceration in the ‘small zone’ of a labour camp in the republic of Mordovia, a ‘prison within the prison’ reserved for women deemed as particularly dangerous political criminals.

Initially deprived of paper, she wrote by scratching her work on bars of soap; memorised and erased the verses then rewrote them when paper became available before somehow smuggling them to her husband, Igor Gerashchenko who arranged their publication.

Ratushinskaya had been found guilty in April 1983 of “agitation carried on for the purpose of subverting or weakening the Soviet regime” and so given a maximum sentence of seven years in the camp followed by five years internal exile.

She was released suddenly on the orders of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev who wanted to prove he was genuine about improved domestic human rights as part of his policy of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (reconstruction).

Ratushinskaya then emigrated to the U.K., moved on  to the United States and then returned to Russia in 1998, settling in Moscow with her family, but in relative obscurity.

While many of the best known dissidents of the period were Jewish, Ratushinskaya was a devout Christian. It seems the cruellest irony that she is now dead while contemporary Jewish heroes of the Soviet human rights movement like Jewish Agency chief Natan Sharansky who was released only a few months before her and Knesset Speaker, Yuli Edelstein survived to live at the acme of Israeli society.  

I conclude this short tribute with her appropriately titled piece, Too Soon to Say Goodbye.

I must point out that the date at the end of the poem implies it was written after her release:

Too soon to say goodbye,

Too soon to say forgive me,

Too soon to send us your instructions:

You know what our luck is like.

Not a door but it will be locked!

Not a net but it will be cast!

Others took to the bottle,

And others just vanished.

Only a few of us left now,

So they're firing at us point blank.

What now? We can read Dostoevsky;

Chip in roubles - for vodka,

Only a few of us left anyhow.

And we know we must fight to the death.

And we know that cruel blacksmith

Forged as out of some unknown metal,

Perhaps doubting our endurance,

Perhaps expecting us to recant.

No! Give us your instructions!

We swear to fulfil them precisely.

Too Soon to despair yet.

You ought to know our luck.

Irina Ratushinskaya

Kiev, 9 December 1986

© Natalie Wood (20 July 2017)

Restoring Miss Toyah

‘Erasure poetry’ is defined as a form of ‘found poetry’ or ‘found art’ created by erasing words from an existing text in prose or verse and framing the result on the page as a poem.

This piece is based largely on a feature and blog post by former BBC correspondent Andrew Whitehead, whose sympathetic research has helped to rescue the short existence  of Victoria M Sofaer, a young Baghdadi Jewish woman, from total oblivion.

I have attempted to use an ‘erasure’ style format to echo  - metaphorize – what happened to Victoria.

Most of the words in this piece are Whitehead’s, along with some of my own.

Restoring Miss Toyah

In Chennai, once Madras,

lies a half-forgotten resting

place for the twice re-settled

residue of the town’s long-time

Jewish dead.

Here, half-faded, and one

further step removed, stands

a solitary gravestone illumined

briefly by a shaft of sunlight

sifting through the trees.

So mystery’s spotlight

shines for the moment

on ‘Miss Victoria M Sofaer’,

lying for eternity aged only

twenty-two.

Who was she?

How did she end

in Chennai? Why

did she meet her

death so young?

Baghdad beginnings had

also ended in an untimely

end when Victoria’s (‘Toyah’)

birth led to her mother,

Dina’s death.

Then in 1939, perhaps 1940,

as a second universal war

began, Toyah romanced an

Armenian man.

From different worlds,

different religions, they

met in secret and when

Toyah's family found out,

they sought to marry her to a

Jewish boy.

But she rejected all suitable

suitors and was shipped out

to India in disgrace.

Towards the close of 1942,

Toyah’s father, Menashi and

Naima, his second wife, who

was Dina’s sister and so Toyah’s

aunt, arrived in Bombay with his

daughter in tow.

There onlookers saw something

in Toyah - her face and demeanour –

that deeply perplexed them.

Her silence left an impression

of a person in shock. There

was something mysterious;

most difficult to understand.

She would not utter a word.

After some time, the three

moved on. In another

Indian city, Toyah died.

So her parents returned

to Baghdad.

Abraham, Toyah’s only surviving

half-brother, now aged 94 and

once the closest to her in the

entire family, still wonders what

caused her untimely demise.

The doctor who had looked after

her in India felt the urge to

tell the authorities about her

serious decline and the role

her parents played.

But he did not pursue this.

The Armenian lover also felt

the need to alert the authorities

about Toyah's deplorable condition

and the role that her parents

played in her incarceration.

But he did not go through with

this idea, either.

So there was no public scandal.

Even within the Jewish

community in Baghdad,

the romance was hushed up.

No-one talked of how Toyah

had died from a broken heart.

And there is yet one more

tragic aspect to this tale:

One rare photo shows Toyah’s

three half-brothers : Elias, the oldest

and tallest; Abraham, standing beside

him and Jack, the toddler.

It was taken in 1927 when Toyah

was aged seven.

Why isn’t she there?

But she once was!

On Elias's left!

After her death, the

image was retouched

to excise her likeness.

This was to ensure there

would be no reminder of the

scandal and tragedy of her life.

Then there are unfounded rumours

of a Baghdadi Jewish custom;

that when people died all pictures

of them were destroyed.

Still, one further photo,

shot in Baghdad, probably

in the early thirties, shows

Grand mère Farha Shamash;

her husband, Saleh and Toyah’s aunt,

Khatoun Meir.

Then – finally – stands

a girl with wavy hair, peeping

out above Khatoun’s head.

This may, just may, be

Toyah Sofaer.

© Natalie Wood (04 July 2017)

Alwayswriteagain: Where Lovers, Lasses Count Their Losses!

Alwayswriteagain: Where Lovers, Lasses Count Their Losses!: I was more than half-way through Philip Roth ’s American Pastoral when I realised that the location of the prizewinning novel and recent ...

Why Islam Cannot Be Modernised

Amid warnings that the fall of Aleppo may be just the start of “a bloodier phase” in Syria’s continuing civil war, I’d like to take time out to look at the work of Adunis ‘Adonis’ Asbar, universally regarded as the greatest poet presently writing in Arabic.

Although he champions Palestinian rights, Asbar - known by his pen-name ‘Adonis’ - has challenged Palestinian nationalism and hopes for a political solution that respects the aspirations of Palestinians and Jews alike.

“I am among those who seek the ills of the Arabs in their own history, not outside of it,” he says.

Indeed Adonis, Syrian-born and a long-time opponent of President Bashar al-Assad, hit the international headlines earlier this year when he claimed that Islam could not be modernised.

Respected for his particular understanding of the language of the Quran, he noted: “Arabs have no more creative force. Islam does not contribute to intellectual life, it suggests no discussion. It is no longer thought. It produces no thinking, no art, no science, no vision that could change the world. This repetition is the sign of its end. The Arabs will continue to exist, but they will not make the world better.”

Now aged 86 and a Nobel Prize nominee, Adonis divides his time between France and Lebanon. His personal friends include Israeli poets, Ronny Someck and Natan Zach. Adonis and Zach have even published a joint work together and when Adonis's work was published in Hebrew in Israel in 1989, Someck wrote a tribute poem that was added to the preface.

I conclude here with a piece that was translated into English by Shawkat M Toorawa whose notes may be read at:    https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/translator-notes/detail/49323.

The New Noah

1

                      

We travel upon the Ark, in mud and rain, 

Our oars promises from God.   

We live—and the rest of Humanity dies.   

We travel upon the waves, fastening 

Our lives to the ropes of corpses filling the skies. 

But between Heaven and us is an opening, 

A porthole for a supplication. 

"Why, Lord, have you saved us alone 

From among all the people and creatures? 

And where are you casting us now? 

To your other Land, to our First Home? 

Into the leaves of Death, into the wind of Life? 

In us, in our arteries, flows a fear of the Sun. 

We despair of the Light, 

We despair, Lord, of a tomorrow 

In which to start Life anew. 

If only we were not that seedling of Creation, 

Of Earth and its generations, 

If only we had remained simple Clay or Ember, 

Or something in between, 

Then we would not have to see   

This World, its Lord, and its Hell, twice over."

                         2

If time started anew, 

and waters submerged the face of life, 

and the earth convulsed, and that god 

rushed to me, beseeching, "Noah, save the living!" 

I would not concern myself with his request. 

I would travel upon my ark, removing   

clay and pebbles from the eyes of the dead. 

I would open the depths of their being to the flood, 

and whisper in their veins   

that we have returned from the wilderness,   

that we have emerged from the cave, 

that we have changed the sky of years, 

that we sail without giving in to our fears— 

that we do not heed the word of that god. 

Our appointment is with death.   

Our shores are a familiar and pleasing despair, 

a gelid sea of iron water that we ford   

to its very ends, undeterred, 

heedless of that god and his word, 

longing for a different, a new, lord.

Source: Poetry (April 2007)

Natalie Wood (17 December 2016)