Ruth Blumert z"l, who was a steady contributor to The Deronda Review throughout most of the magazine's history, lived in Jerusalem.  She published eleven books of poetry, prose and translations (including a verse translation of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner) and served as editor of the theater magazine Bamah; she was awarded the Jerusalem Prize and the Levy Eshkol prize.  Through several decades she suffered from an incapacitating illness, but continued to the last to write poems distinguished by wry humor, striking imagery and a determination to face reality. She was released on the sixth day of Chanukah 5775.  Below are the poems that appeared in translation in our magazine.  She is greatly missed.--EC

LIGHT

Suddenly the world will become illumined. It must,

In spite of the sun and moon so busy keeping watch,

and I will laugh at its dismay

and my smile

will blare out the forgotten song.

Verily I say unto you

verily

the light is in me

and truth and love

it’s hard to believe

in ruth

this is an almost

hallucinatory

possibility

but the light that will break forth from behind the blockade

of sun and stars

and that perhaps will vanish at the first

shadow of doubt

is as real as the sun

and more brightly blazing

the ash of my body will testify to something

or will disappear

I will understand.

In the genes of the universe I am the soul

plagued by mutations and obstacles

a problem for itself

but the soul is used to reality.

Only the soul’s love is of the hidden source

in a sphere beyond understanding

perhaps from beyond the kingdom

which no ancient city and no orient surmised

and abides in the shadow of its noble reflection.

I’ll be diagnosed as a megalomaniac

as one who has lost touch with reality

because of the truth and love that is in me.

I am sick with illuminations

I don’t know to what extent it is harmful

How shall I stand it

When will the world become illumined

become illumined

as it must.

***

THE REFUSAL

Again his face is turned to the wall

refusing to recognize

the last doctor who has arrived.

The house like a crypt in midday

and he howled when they revived him suddenly

from his recurring dream, in the garden

in the shadow of another tree.

In the windowless room, by the flickering candle

they placed a feather to spy on his breathing

which he stopped,

precipitately ignoring them.

The family hopes for a miracle worthy of notice

in some evangelium.

***

This time the roses in the can were red and beautiful

A man with silver teeth bent toward the seller

who was calmly smoking other fragrances:

How much

for one?

A woman set down her plastic bag beside her feet

and smiled

though each time she is surprised afresh.

***

So there is nothing except

the beating of the heart in space

The space of the chest makes noise

and there is no ear, no one.

The legs as they were there once

kick aside a pebble to smooth the path –

a habit,

though laudable.

And then

for an eye-blink

a bird ascending, a beautiful tree

the flutter of an eyelid, a wing, a branch

a weathervane

The pulses play a tune

The ear curls on itself like a shell on the seashore

in enthralling delight

***

SEASON OF TRANSITION

I put on white clothes

innocent of grease spots

pure as the polar snow.

Now I am wrapped and enveloped

by my two green leaves:

the cradle and the wedding canopy.

One day a butterfly

will break forth from its shrouds

and fly away.

***

SPRING WIND

I am exhausted from following the movements of the branches in the wind:

they move with a desperate alacrity,

dust whirling round them.

In the glass of hot tea, green mint gyrates

at the touch of a silver spoon.

It will grow cold and drift to the bottom, weary and ragged.

I cover myself with clothing,

turn on all the space heaters –

the cold inside me is still wins.

***　

THE READER OF COFFEE GROUNDS

The reader of coffee grounds turned the cup over.

There were no grounds at all.

Transparent, occluded secrets laughed silently.

But the cup twitched in the disappointed hand

like a body

like a dimmed crystal ball

whose core hints:

The future is hidden

The waters of purification sink into the dust.

***

AV 5765

The events of the month of Av took place

in the blazing clarity

of August.

And there was no comforter –

aside from words

which sound hollow even in the dark

and there is no comforter –

We need a month of Em.

                        [Note: “Av,” the name of the month, also means “father."  Av, the month when the temple was destroyed, is often referred to euphemistically as "Av the comforter." “Em” is “mother."]

*

The first day of the week.

I thought there was no chance

but I phoned my daughter.

and she answered:

Moshe is waiting in the car.

That was apparently the last phone call to Atsmonah –

short and to the point.

Perhaps she was crying.

I was.

*

[untitled]

Let it rain. Bring down the rain. Get everything wet.

Including the washing on the line. That is,

Turn all that is clean and dry

Into a spongy miserable cold dark mass

Like me.

*

THE LIVES OF POEMS

I don’t show them to my children –

Why should I make them depressed?

The poems that I don’t tear up,

abandon, throw away,

are more numerous than the sand on the seashore,

and like the sand are crystalline,

rough to the touch,

flowing,

pouring into each other.

Some of them stick together

like sandstone.

And when the sun strikes them at just the right angle,

they glitter like diamonds.

In the dark they slumber, as I do,

crowded together like dreams,

coalescing to a real epic

of which the daylight illumines only fragments

that are difficult to piece together,

to restore the exciting reality that they had when they streamed through my brain

As if through an hourglass about

to need turning over,

which perhaps will plead for a chance to start over

with the same grains of sand in other combinations;

and if a steamroller or a bulldozer should go over them

and turn the material to gleaming powder –

the essence of the poem –

someone else will be able to begin

his own epic.

JOURNEYINGS

We were exiled from land to land, from one continent to another,

and when we gathered in a place that was wretched compared to its past

it was already inhabited and hostile.

Although the wind blew on it from far off,

we set up housekeeping there.

Now we are exiles in the guise of tourists:

Two weeks in Patagonia, a few hours in the Louvre,

stuck in travel agencies,

spending the night in airports,

equipped with backpacks and suitcases packed to bursting

like a promise that there is somewhere to go back to.

And where

where are we going to, ascending and descending –

near-experts at reading foreign signs –

and again, where is the gate to our desired destination?

In the meantime,

like chameleons we suit ourselves to the background

so as not to be caught in some definition that would commit us

and cancel the exclusive group individuality we almost acquired

On our most recent journeyings.

[untitled]

I didn’t think

I was

a brain open to all winds and wild spirits

seized with fears

struggling

constantly

in a cell –

a tattered skeleton –

cudgeling itself with subjects beyond the clouds

Sometimes with a kind of satisfying arrogance –

sometimes with an understanding

that barely managed

to lay

an outsize egg

that would roll out of the nest

*

[untitled]

I contract into my 4 cubits

and expand with each day.

From the aperture in my ark the world appears

more tranquil than before.

I’ve gotten used to moving less,

breathing less.

This is my life for the time being,

aureoled with a film of resignation.

One can see a lot with closed eyes:

it would take innumerable nights to describe the abundance.

Human voices from other nights still echo here –

they grow fainter, as do I.

*

LIES THAT I TOLD MYSELF

Like a television character I declaim:

You deserve to be happy.

Don’t let happiness pass you buy.

Leaning on the windowsill I see

he’s there, on another sidewalk,

elusive, homeless.

Others hurry down the street,

each to their home

where their happiness dwells

and patiently waits.

Soon it will pour them a cup of tea and ask how it was.

*

LONGING

This evening I will lie down, facing the sky,

I will look up at the stars and the cosmic dust,

I will wait for a star to drop to my side

with a slip of paper

containing a detailed answer.

Till then I shall give myself up to the humming of the wheels.

*

I WROTE

I wrote a poem about death and destroyed it in the draft,

but it comes back, tunnelling among cracks and crevices,

under the threshold,

climbing up the windows.

A troublemaking, incorruptible robot,

mute and focused,

deaf to cries and plots these many ages,

indifferent to flattery and bribes

from those weary of their lives’ din.

On its wings

and in its hands and knapsack

are prophecies

compared to which hurricanes are a smile.

It gazes round with a thousand eyes

like a postman from a vanished kingdom,

a kingdom plagued with thirst,

a library of negatives.

*

THEY TOLD ME TO WRITE

about poetry, yet,

and the shock caused the words

to rush around inside me.

I remained by myself

and you – the land’s pillars of salt

– are desirous of watching

the internal overthrow

in the gaping, gulping pits

whose existence you never guessed.

And my poem wallows amid its burnt-out brothers

in my internal Moab and Ammon.

Without any Qumran cave

the words climb upward, scroll by scroll,

darker than our eyes.

*

THE CONDEMNED CITY

Said the elders of the condemned city:

Not our hands shed this blood!

In truth, with all our hearts,

We looked into it thoroughly.

What remains to be revealed

is the whereabouts of that red cow

that never bore a yoke

and whose ashes

will purify everything.

                                              translated by Esther Cameron