Rachel Korn | Poems | ALL THAT WAS TRUE AND PUT FORTH LEAVES

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RACHEL KORN / GRIEF POEMS / MY HAND

My Hand
Translated by Mayer Landau

My hand forgot to stroke your head,
Was left suspended in the air,
Like a mute and frozen cry-
While like a small white boat
Swimming under my fingers
Came the dream of a child,
That could have been yours.

My lips
In all their sadness
And partial understanding,
Are strung with the bead of a smile,
To fool you,
Me
And God himself.

My eyes are covered with autumn
Like birds’ nests left in the woods
Perhaps a single word,
A sound, gentle and thin
Could find the way back
To that lost summer.

But my hand,
Like a dried up branch,
Can blossom no more under your gaze.
A single moment
Stripped away its tenderness,
Like the wind an autumn tree
And left it to rock a far-off, lifeless dream.

My hand was left suspended in the air,
In the middle of the road-
Wait no longer
My outspread fingers
Are swimming away with the dream.

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