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Gabriel Levin’s Essay on Robert Friend’swork

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Edward Field’s Essay on Robert Friend

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Anthony Rudolf’s Obituary and Tribute

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Robert Friend’s poetry

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Photos of Robert Friend

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Feature of Friend’s work in a previous issue

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Robert Friend’s essay on TranslatingRachel at www.poetryinternationalweb.net

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Robert Friend’s translations.Copyright © Jean Shapiro Cantu
[email protected]

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Contributor Notes





Leah Goldberg(1911-1970)

Translated by Robert Friend

 

 

Tel Aviv 1935

 

The roof-poles in thosedays

were like the masts of Columbus,

every crow on their pinnacles

announcing new shores.

 

Along the streets strolledknapsacks,

and words of a foreign country

plunged into khamsin days

like the cold blade of a knife.

 

How could the small air support

so many recollections

of childhood and of withered loves

and rooms grown empty elsewhere?

 

Like blackening snaps in acamera,

their images reversed:

white winter nights across the sea,

rainy nights of summer,

capitals dark at dawn.

 

Behind you foreignfootsteps drummed

the marching songs of an army,

and on the sea you thought you saw

the church of your old town floating.

 

 

From Foundin Translation: Modern Hebrew Poets, a Bilingual Edition

Selected and with an Introduction by GabrielLevin.

(The Toby Press, 2006)



 


Not for a long time now…


 

Not for a long time now hasanyone waited for me.

Who will wait for a ship ifthere is no sea?

The circle draws in. Shortis the way.

What’s there to say?

Another year? Anothermonth? Another day?

 

I shall lie under theearth, bnut something will remain above.

Somebody will hatesomebody. Somebody will love.

The account is unsettled.Short is the way.

What’s there to say?

Another year? Anothermonth? Another day?

 

The dew falls and theevening chills my face.

At the street corner thesame bus stops at the same place.

Tomorrow I shall wakeagain,

And again I shall say,

‘Dear God!

Another year, anothermonth, another day.’

 

 

From Foundin Translation: Modern Hebrew Poets, a Bilingual Edition

Selected and with an Introduction by GabrielLevin.

(The Toby Press, 2006)