Nathan Yonathan
To Lior’s friend Sephi Schaumann, who fell in the Lebanon War 1
JOSEPH HATH BEEN DEVOURED
Joseph hath been devoured, eaten by an evil beast
and what o his dreams and his children Ayelet and Ophir?
He has been devoured and is no more because God
has taken him too and left a tank charred by fire
with one torn phylacteries in the turret.
If after battle there should be some place
where friends meet, look for his handsome face,
say to him. "Brother, brother, for nine years
after you on the roads, dressed in armour, I breathed
dust and love. Now I’m coming to rest
my wornout head on your shoulder."
All of us relied on him always, you used to say
after the war. So if there is such a place
tell him that we wait from day to day.
For in this place, once our land,
the islands are sinking. Ashes
and rust, and our strength
are shrinking, and near the places
where he passed we desire to die
and Time like a tank
crushes, crushes...
1) The poet’s son was killed in a tank in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. This poem is dedicated to the
son’s friend, who was killed 9 years later in the Lebanon War.
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