The Water Man by Shulamit Sapir – Nevo Trans: Mel Rosenberg
"Fields free of furrows
Grow what they will." Succinct is the word for shulamit's poetry! Aided by the natural brevity of words in
Hebrew that so easily interlock like a neat crossword puzzle; any translation into English is bound to suffer even a little from lack of economy.
Economy of means is the hallmark of good poetry no matter what the rhythm; in terse
phrase Shulamit packs in an abundance of rich astonishing images,
"My water man
passes among the sleeping corals
and rubs them with his palms until he shows their true colour…"
Shulamit is at her best when she takes the world at large into herself and makes it a part of herself. She absorbs nature and does not reduce it thereby.
"My voice does not do justice
to this soft gesture
which the moonlight makes on my face
as the smell of wheat lusts within me."
24/4/07
Dear Shulamit,
We have had the honor to hear you reading your poetry when Mel invited the Ramot team to the Jazz club at Beit Hadar about a year/year and a half ago.
We were deeply moved by your poems, especially the one called "My Child", because it related directly to our feeling towards our eldest daughter, Yael, who was at the time at University College of London, doing her Ph.D. thesis in Computational NeuroScience.
We have provided Yael with your book, "קצת ממה שאסור", as a marriage present, and read the attached at the wedding in Tel Aviv.
We have allowed ourselves to translate your songs into English, together with a song by Hava Alberstein, since few of the guests at the wedding ceremony in Tel Aviv, coming from the US and from the UK, needed translation...
Thank you very much for the opportunity to use your words. Yael, who was deeply moved, sends her thanks as well.
