שיר כאב [Shir Ke'ev] [English translation]

Song of agony, ebbs and flows,

I'm in luck, I can sing it now.

Song of agony, back again,

So I'll sing it now in aid.

She caught her a Palestinian, an Arab intellectual

One I happened to know

I even saw it begin

One night I tippled and saw it sneak beneath my feet

How it ate at me from the inside to the edge of my nails.

Sure, I'm not the one to surround a woman 365 degrees.

There's always a slit through which she can come to light.

To a passerby to take all that she wants to give.

Then she kidnaps for herself another quivering moment.

Song of agony…

A young Palestinian indeed, to the edge of my nails.

A young Palestinian indeed, one that looks you straight in the eye.

A teacher in some village near Haifa

Takes part in a mixed theatre group in our jumbled city.

We dated for a while, her and I

But where is she now and where are my politics?

They're making love.

She's crazy about theatre, she isn't one of those

But if there's any play around

Then why not with them, those Arabs.

Song of agony…

She would go to a conclave weekly

And return with happiness on her lapel

Constantly

With the same shortness of breath and sanguine cheeks

Her livid visage would blunt my weeping.

She invited me to a party where he performed a play

And how he performed and played her perfectly

She indulged him.

A master at work, hands clapping everywhere,

A young Palestinian indeed - one that looks you straight in the eye.

After the party we're invited to his balcony

We drink coffee, we drink cognac, his mother sometimes enters

He speaks of theatre as a way of understanding

She moves closer to him, impassioned.

I looked here, I looked there, to all directions I wandered,

And wherever I gazed I caught his eyes.

I didn't know what he wanted to say then.

I just downed my cognac.

Song of agony…

Out in the distance dogs howled at the moon.

"We're going," I said, "it's late."

"Wait," he said, "where are you running to? Sleep here tonight," he painfully suggested,

Seeing how much cognac I had.

I told him "we'll get there."

"Where will you get to?" he said, looking me straight in the eyes

I looked back, and threw "to Jerusalem" at him.

Moments later he smiled but still his gaze was at me.

Then he spoke to me, straight through the wine.

"At the end of every sentence you say in Hebrew there's an Arab sitting with a narghile,

Even if you start in Siberia or in Hollywood with Hava Nagila."

I told him in Yiddish that "she'll be the judge of that"

And in the bubble of silence that ensued our eyes met again.

Song of agony...