10 poems about Israel and Palestine1

AI ‘art’ – The desert night is full of longing

Introduction

“Whatever is hateful and distasteful to you, do not do to your fellow man. This is the entire Torah, the rest is commentary. Go learn. "

― Hillel the Elder, Talmud, Shabbath 31a (Judaism’s Golden Rule)

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Another morning

I awake and shake

My tired head

Warm the old

Cold coffee

That’s when the panic hits me

‘My God!, you lunatic!

What have you done?

Look what you wrote!

Do you remember what you said?

You imagined it all! ‘

A dreadful waking fever dream

Curse these amygdalan frenzies

These ’translations’ were made relying on a number of sources including AI translations and, in respect of ‘It Is Possible’, relying heavily on Robert Bly’s translation which he named ‘Pushing Through’. The author does not speak German, so interpretations might be a more accurate description.

1. It Is Possible
2. The Watcher

It Is Possible

It is possible I am trying to push through solid rock lying in

“Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still”

(T.S. Eliot)

I told my sad story to the wind and, brutal wind,

It would not listen to a single word.

So I sung to the cold cruel sea,

But it shrugged off my song in the toss of a wave,

Little escaped their minute attentions and predations:

The Soul, an early casualty

Of more precise instrumentation

Senescence, just another

Dragon to be slayed

The mysteries gave way

To complex refutation

AI generated image

Too few paused

To wonder whether

Ever quicker

Computation

Would unleash the

Ancient iron law

Of more is less