This piece is one of an ongoing series that we are sharing from Israeli authors and authors in Israel.
It is critical to understand history not just through the books that will be written later, but also through the first-hand testimonies and real-time accounting of events as they occur. At Jewish Book Council, we understand the value of these written testimonials and of sharing these individual experiences. It’s more important now than ever to give space to these voices and narratives.
The Live Pulse of Eternal Silence
Dry leaves swirl
Above the red-tiled roof of a shed in the backyard.
The busy wind whistles, flinging
Leaves from point to point.
As a girl I listened to the wind
shaking the trees,
to the rustle of tiny leaves gripping branches.
I gazed at violet mountains
Touching blue sky stretched taut across horizons.
At night the heavens crowded with gold dots,
Infinite stars, miniscule stars
Twinkling like streetlamps in some distant city.
The noises of nature echoed in a limitless space
The live pulse of eternal silence.
Time shortens as it reaches the end
And life is another day gone by.
Patches of sunshine spread
Through a darkening room
And I gaze at the red-tiled roof
And the gloom that creeps up slowly,
The black shadow that crawls along
Unfurling over everything.
Real is a Passing Illusion
In the sundown of body
The flesh fractures,
Real is a passing illusion
A brief deceit.
It’s the blowing wind moving
The light flickering
Between jumping shadows
Between colors,
It’s the green brimming
Out of the earth,
The blue skies,
Free birds traveling
Between heavens,
Wild horses galloping
Along the long beaches
Frothy white waves
Exploding
Shard after shard.
A sweet water lake lingers
Between naked mountain slopes.
It’s the wind wafting
Between fragments.
The views and opinions expressed above are those of the author, based on their observations and experiences.
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Michal Perry is a poet, painter and multidisciplinary artist. She was born in Jerusalem and graduated from the Avni Art Institute in Tel Aviv, and also completed an MA at Bar-Ilan University. Her poems have appeared in leading journals and she has published three full-length poetry collections, Scrolls of Nothing (2009), Between Light and Light (Argaman-Meitav, 2022) and A Lost Space of Time (Katav Publishing House, 2024). Between 1990 – 2004, Michal Perry lived and worked in New York as manager and curator of the Klarfeld Perry Gallery. In addition, she presented solo exhibitions and participated in international group exhibitions in the US and Europe. Read more at www.michaelperry.com.
Joanna Chen is a writer and literary translator of contemporary poetry and prose from Hebrew to English.