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The
works of Israeli poet Natan Zach (b. Berlin, 1930; arrived in Israel,
1935) are marked by a dramatic and emotive immediacy. While his
motifs — the sea, the wind, birds, mountains, trees, night,
moon, seasons, sky — are stock romantic images, they are set
in anti-romantic contexts, conveying, ironically, loneliness, hopelessness,
death. Zach's early use of colloquial Hebrew set him apart from
his more classically oriented predecessors, as did his use of literary
allusions from other than biblical frameworks.
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GIVE
ME WHAT THE TREE HAS
Give me what the tree
has and what it won't lose
and give me the power to lose what the tree has.
The faint tracings the wind makes in the darkness of a summer night
and the darkness which has neither trace nor shape.
Give me the shapes I once had and have no more
the strength to think that they've been lost. Give me
an eye stronger than what it sees and a hand
harder than what it seeks. Let me inherit
you without receiving anything that's not past
the moment I receive it. Give me the power to come near,
without fear, precisely to what I'm not meant
to hold dear, let me come near.
"For
is the tree of the field a man whom comes in siege before you?"
Based on a poem by Nathan Zach.
Translation by Ariel Brosh
 
Because the man is the tree of the field;
Like the tree the man grows up.
Like the the man, the tree also gets uprooted,
And I surely do not know
where I have been and where I will be,
like the tree of the field.
Because the man is
the tree of the field;
Like the tree he aspires upwards.
Like the man, he gets burnt in fire,
And I surely do not know
where I have been and where will I be,
like the tree of the field.
Because the man is
the tree of the field;
Like the tree he is thirsty to water.
Like the man, thirsty he remains,
And I surely do not know
where I have been and where will I be,
like the tree of the field.
I've loved, and I've hated;
I've tasted both this and that;
I was buried in a plot of land;
And it's bitter, it's bitter in my mouth,
Like the tree of the field;
Like the tree of the field.
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 From
Israeli Poetry: A Contemporary Anthology selected and translated
by Warren Bargad and Stanley F. Cheyt, copyright 1986 by Indiana University
Press. Reproduced with permission of the publisher, Indiana University
Press, Bloomington, Indiana." |
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