By Agi Mishol
Translated by Barbara Mann
Now that death creeps all around
and the pecans are bursting their shells,
I hide within Hebrew.
Nothing will befall me in innocent writing.
Nothing will befall me
if I am absorbed into the letters,
if I don’t go outside the line --
shrunk to a small dot
stuffed inside an O
or into the belly of a C,
a semicolon dripping tears
like a captive.
Beloved holy tongue,
now that everything is in its own time
and everything now is horror,
when the orchard stretches out
and the earth is plowed,
I do only what Rilke says:
let beauty and terror happen to me
without thinking
that this is my end.
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I had a social Wednesday on Google Meet. All three of my high school friends were on chat in the morning -- one was just back from a tour of national parks and had spectacular photos of Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons -- so I got to talk to them for an hour and a half. Then we had lunch, I did some reading, and Laurie came and watched the second half of Thunderbolts* with me and Kristen. I want so much to believe the news -- I don't even care if Trump gets the fucking Nobel Peace Prize as long as the war ends.
It was another gorgeous day in the 60s and we saw four eagles or possibly five, plus lots of geese at the beach. There was lots of baseball on TV from midafternoon through the evening, none of which ended the way I wanted except the Blue Jays knocking the Yankees out, but hopefully the Mariners will clinch at home on Friday. Then we watched this week's Gen V (excellent this season) and some Upload (better first season than second but still enjoyable). Issaquah had lots of pretty fall color on display during Salmon Days:
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