up close

excerpts from S. Yizhar’s “Khirbet Khizeh”

photograph by A.B. Godfreed

straight ahead
point out that
tell you everything
it’s fear
hanging over their heads
our machine
defrauded us
we’d been expecting
to keep them
something struck me like lightening
quietly submitted to it
those silenced
yet pronounced
first it rattled
different from other times
in sudden panic or alarm they had fallen
winding lane
pure heroics
permission to show
a thousand cries
affirms that human love is
when silence had closed in
the very image of God’s form
and so forth
in silent obedience
voices

***

This piece (including the title) is composed out of phrases taken randomly from “Khirbet Khizeh”, a 1949 novella, written by S. Yizhar and translated by Nicholas de Lange and Yaacob Dweck (2008).

In 2009, I bought this book from Judd Books (one of my favorite London bookshops) and I am only now sitting down to read it properly. It is, so far, beautifully written prose on a rather heavy topic.