Poems by Martin Berman-Gorvine (some under the name Martin J. Gidron) |
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Three Haiku |
First rays of sunrise pause on wave crests - Sudden gold! Midnight garden - under rain-dripping trees a barrel of moonlight. How strange - the frost has painted a tropical scene with ice crystals. |
Previously published in Dragonfly: East/West Haiku Quarterly, Winter 1989. Copyright © 1986, Martin Berman-Gorvine, copyright © 1989, Dragonfly |
Wind in Tel Aviv |
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The wind announces autumn's arrival. It pokes in all the corners stirs up dust devils and scratchy dead leaves shakes raindrops off the trees and onto cars and makes all the puddles shiver with excitement. The sky too is different: another blue, firmer and brighter across which clouds march in businesslike fashion. A chatter of birds passes on the way to an important appointment in Africa. |
(Tel Aviv, August 1996) |
Previously published in Voices Israel, 1996. Copyright © 1996, Martin Berman-Gorvine, copyright © 1996, Voices Israel |
Untitled |
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Soft as rain falling on dry cracked earth, your love touches the ancient hurts that will not heal smoothes the sharp edges of nightmare eases the bitterness of time lost forever. But I am a million thirsty plants; I cannot get enough of your water and if my desert blooms thanks to you its rocky outlines are slow to change beneath the gentle flow. |
(Tel Aviv, January 31, 1996) |
Previously published in Voices Israel, 1997-98. Copyright © 1996, Martin Berman-Gorvine, copyright © 1999, Voices Israel |
Fluent Hebrew |
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The Hebrew language does not flow like sweet water from my tongue but drips with difficulty, like honey and leaks into my foreign dreams and my voice betrays me, every time I speak so I get lost in the foreign flood. But the Hebrew letters are solid as stone and I cling to their familiar shapes. Slowly, I gather together those stones and build myself an island in the midst of the sea. And from my small, safe island I listen quietly to the voices of the water. |
(Tel Aviv, 23 Tevet 5754 / January 6, 1994). Author's translation of an original Hebrew poem. |
Translation published in Jewish Currents, May 2000 |
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