Text by Raffael Lomas

Toward an impasse
for Anat-Tamar

I--
I'm a life lover,
as you know,
and I'm a life lover
who even goes to Dachau to find
I'm going

Life is not much of a life lover,
as you know,
it's a measured love
and my life cannot be measured
though my body is small
and my shoe size 42
though only with stretched toes

Deep within life asks for the entire sun
and the parched earth
the crying and laughter before and after
and pain--the pain of joy
the joy of pain
restraint and wantonness
and you
where does life have room for a little man
like me
so I stretch
here
like that
I--I'm a life lover
I love
love the I
and it's not simple nor self-evident
for a life lover like me
because to him who l! ives
nothing is evident

And death too comes and goes,
which, as you know,
doesn't make it easier
on love
love of life

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Wheels
for Mendy

And then I danced
days of Paris, after Dachau, Lausanne, Van Gogh,
brought along iniquities,
if I should have seen them as omens--
I refused,
and the more impossible the way
the more I felt I was right,
a delicate line--
today I'm not sure either where it runs
misleading, beguiling

May we "find grace and good understanding in the eyes of God and of man."

And in the prayer for the road

"Give your blessings to everything we make, for the sake of beauty, grace, pity, for you and the world to behold."


It seems that only God's beholding is not enough
and this shouldn't mean that I heard voices
that I don't know how things fall into place.
"There's!  no blessing but in invisible things"--
so I believed and ! still do.
And blessing is out of the question, instead the knees falter
Paris
exactly six years ago
I waited for months
signed contracts, urgent telephone calls
did nothing
we went
to a flea market
I like walking with you

Unlike me, as though weights were tied to my feet
you float, in your way,
two iron wheels were there
old carriage wheels
you bought them for me

Everything I've done since
is linked, bound entwined with those two wheels
I took and by cutting and bending
changed

and then I danced,

Tel Aviv, 2006
From Healing ghosts


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Home--what is home
the main part of phylacteries is called house
there's the mind's house
there's the hand's house
a mind's house tends toward thought
a hand's house tends toward the heart

The labor of prayer is to join the heart and the mind!
between the mind and the heart
from another viewpoint
to let the heart understand what the minds asks
to let the mind feel what the heart says

The labor of creation demands

to understand what can't be felt
to feel what is not understood
and so to be the creator's home.

Florence, Italy, 2006
From Healing ghosts

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The paths I walk on
no one else has
and if he did
he left no traces

The paths I walk on
I haven't either
and if I did
I left no traces
on the paths
the I walks




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However, perhaps

For you, perhaps, the war ended in '44 or '45
In my world, however, it went on in '62

Perhaps for you the world was so threatening
that you chose not to exist until the war ended
In my world! , however, I'm so threatened that the war
never began and ! never ended

Perhaps for you they wore black and boots
In my world, however, they're totally transparent

Perhaps, for me, I shielded you from me
Perhaps for you
In your world, however, my son, it will be different

In memory of my grandfather Itzhak Lomas

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