Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

« Previous item
Contents of this issue
Next item »

Atar Hadari

print this page

City of Heaven

If I could, I would build my father a city
with streetlights yellow as the eyes of snakes -
alabaster fountains made of marble and veined blue sky
end of colonades - like women’s knees -

If I could I would build him heaven
a hall where the croupier’s table never sets
a limit and opening handles
send rivers of gold tumbling, tinkling
to overflowing cups -

If I could I would offer
bones to answer for the flesh
too thinly ground in the meat grinder
and doled too gristly rationed
between half stale shards of bread

If I could I would offer

something to make sense of the sky
empty after too many borrowed
suns set under too heavy an interest cloud -

If I could I would build a city
of gold where the flesh could heal
from all the disappointments of the burial
in change, the disappointments of the water wheel

and somewhere my father
sitting in his armchair, driven to his knees
with need - leaning to nowhere
rising and rocking and failing to find his feet

will see the spires in silence
open the sky as the stars step
one by one out of the gloom
see the spires blot out
all that he failed so long ago to drown.

 


Atar Hadari was an RSC Young Writer for 1999. His selected translations from the Hebrew poet Hayim Nahman Bialik, Songs from Bialik, were published by Syracuse University Press in 2000. The European Association for Jewish Culture recently commissioned him to write a play about a piano.

 

Page(s) 35

Back to top