Exercises in Practical Hebrew
Dan Pagis
1982
“Are you at peace? Hast thou killed and also taken possession?”
(examples of interrogative sentences in a grammar book)
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Creator Bio
Dan Pagis
1930–1986
Poet Dan Pagis was born in Romania and was sent to a concentration camp during his childhood. He immigrated to Israel in 1946 and joined Kibbutz Merḥavyah. A professor of medieval Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University, Pagis published several collections of poetry, as well as works for children. Not until 1970, however, did Pagis begin to address the Holocaust in poems that established a new poetics of indirection. In 1973, he was awarded the Prime Minister’s Prize.
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Shreds of Earth
On a night like this if a shudder were to shake your flesh as though a nightmare
had severed your sleep I could have risen and quietly walked to the kitchen
to write you a poem that would bring you…
The Dancing
In all these rotten shops, in all this broken furniture
and wrinkled ties and baseball trophies and coffee pots
I have never seen a post-war Philco
with the automatic eye
nor heard Ravel’s “Bolero”…
Gaudeamus
[…] In my confusion
I didn’t know how to answer my detractors, those
who brand me
a poseur because I pronounce the c in the Castilian manner or I say fellow instead of guy (I love)
miscegenations
(pe…
Once More
You’re so brave, you camp-followers of Cain—
after Baudelaire, yet! Shit-shoveling first father,
your visa was validated
when that cretinous cudgel whammed the wandering
flock’s shepherd, that day…
We Had an Understanding
Savta, grandma,
could it be our transparent skin,
skin that doesn’t protect the flesh,
not in the least.
This story of ours
has details that are better left untold,
it’s good to leave blots of…
Burning Holy Books
Holy books, said my friend, angry,
there’s no such thing. Books,
books: let them talk
to us about books.
It was a hot night.
At noon light rips
through the room, and everything’s clear:
over the…