Sderot, A child's painting
It took me twenty years to love
this hole in the middle of nowhere.
The cotton buds dispersed in a white flame
and the wind meddled in the cypresses,
until I saw for the first time,
with an accurate eye,
the unsophisticated buildings beneath the roof of clouds,
until I heard
the wonderful rumbling of the street.
The last whisper expelled from waves of asphalt
blended with the rustle of evening’s thud on the ground,
like the voice of a forgotten woman that betrayed her
and told the truth which she tried
to conceal in her face.
Years of erosion
have taught the children to fondle the water in the stone,
to splash in the puddles paper boats with farcical hope.
The circus-like past of the girls blossomed with the hiking of a skirt
when the crowed sawed him in two with its gaze.
Only places bereft of love are entitled to absolute love.
Shimon Adaf
