I am telling the children

 Once there was a bird, once there was a pretty bird,
common like a sparrow or a palm dove, its voice
like the wind whispering among the poplar’s leaves.
Its nest was made of everything soft, 
and its nestlings were so soft, covered by down,
with beaks, so full of life, wide open, and the bird
went away and came back to the nestlings
and hearing her voice come close their beaks
would open wide desperate like love, screaming for her: 
Here, a bird mother rises
to feed us all she gleaned, and she was 
hovering over the nestlings as she flew,
her voice like the wind whispering
among the poplar’s leaves, as she
barely touches their heads.

Once there was a shadow cast not by sunlight
a shadow cast by firelight,
a shadow like the palm, dense, dark, dripping,
the shadow of darkness lurking sprawling devouring, and it waited,
and it hovered over the nest.
And it imitated the wind’s sound in the poplar’s leaves
and the nestlings’ beaks opened wide desperate like love
facing the hovering shadow as if it were a pretty mother bird, and now

No soft nest                                                                and no beak
No hunger                                                                    no love
No sun                                                                            no good, pretty bird,
All over the land a hovering shadow            dripping from the fire

What do you see

What do you see:
I see flying balloons, 
Screaming birds, feathers, feathers at the entryways,
A father leading a baby girl’s stroller, frozen in his stance

What do you see: 
I see burning fire in a flower shop,
Inside their home nice children, their pupils glowing
Wearing bike helmets for the fear of cannons
A woman shouts into the phone a nightmare rumor

What do you see: 
I don’t see, I hear weeping gods
Behind a tall tree or behind shrubs
Only a flesh and blood mother hovers over her chicks, and in her wings
Shines all the world’s mercy, how she is devoured 
In the teeth of a monster

What do you see, I see
We have been overturned. The sun was covered by angel ashes
Jackals showed their teeth in our fields, all the children are wide open  
We shall sleep no more, God’s darkness woke us up
 

Translated from the Hebrew by Galit Hasan-Rokem