PINE
Here I will not hear the voice of the cuckoo.
Here the tree will not wear a cape of snow.
But it is here in the shade of these pines
my whole childhood reawakens.
The chime of the needles: Once upon a time –
I called the snow-space homeland,
and the green ice at the river's edge -
was the poem's grammar in a foreign place.
Perhaps only migrating birds know -
suspended between earth and sky -
the heartache of two homelands.
With you I was transplanted twice,
with you, pine trees, I grew -
roots in two disparate landscapes.
© Translation: Rachel Tzvia Back
From: Collected Poems [Yalkut Shirim]
Publisher: Iachdav/Writers Association, edited by Tuvia Rivner 1970
Here I will not hear the voice of the cuckoo.
Here the tree will not wear a cape of snow.
But it is here in the shade of these pines
my whole childhood reawakens.
The chime of the needles: Once upon a time –
I called the snow-space homeland,
and the green ice at the river's edge -
was the poem's grammar in a foreign place.
Perhaps only migrating birds know -
suspended between earth and sky -
the heartache of two homelands.
With you I was transplanted twice,
with you, pine trees, I grew -
roots in two disparate landscapes.
© Translation: Rachel Tzvia Back
From: Collected Poems [Yalkut Shirim]
Publisher: Iachdav/Writers Association, edited by Tuvia Rivner 1970