Also in this issue, poems by:
Kathryn Hellerstein
Miriam Ulinover
Hadassah Rubin
Kadya Molodowsky
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© Copyright to Kathryn Hellerstein, 2003, all rights reserved. Photo credit: Celia Dropkin, IN HEYSN VINT (New York, 1959).
Celia Dropkin
(New York, 1935, 1959)
Translated by
Kathryn Hellerstein
You are a spider, I am a fly.
Your net is artfully spun,
And there’s no release.
The mother-of-pearl colors tease,
Playing on your net of sun.
I fly in, ready to die.
Strolling Across White Clouds
When I lay bound
Beneath the burden of muscular legs and arms,
Suddenly I saw you and me
Strolling across airy clouds.
Your face was transparent
As an airy cloud,
But your lips, your red lips,
Puffed out like a child’s, bloomed tenderly.
Mild as two bits of blue sky
Through white clouds,
Your eyes looked upon me.
Your refined face and your figure
Gradually dissolved with the clouds,
But your lips bloomed somewhere
Far off, as through veils.
I sensed that I, too, was melting
Like a white cloud.
Only my lips remained.
And as though through a white cloud, I saw
Your lips, red and puffed out like a child’s,
Floating toward mine, which were burning.
To Lucifer
My beautiful Lucifer,
Your cold, gray gaze
Looks unmoved upon me,
And distorted, like an ape,
I kneel
And lick your slender feet.
My back has bent
Like a question-mark
But it doesn’t matter
How long you look
Unmoved upon me,
My beautiful Lucifer,
I will squat
At your feet
Like a chimera
On Notre Dame.
