Today I’m honored to share two poems by Israeli writer and artist Helen Bar-Lev, a longtime Winning Writers subscriber. Helen is the Overseas Connections Coordinator for Voices Israel Group of Poets in English, and winner of numerous awards including the International Senior Poet Laureate title from the Amy Kitchener Foundation. She has had over 100 exhibitions of her landscape paintings, 34 of which were one-woman shows. She lives in Metulla with her partner, Bernard Mann, author of the Biblical historical novel David & Avshalom: Life and Death in the Forest of Angels.

Now or Before or Soon

Now that you’re gone
and I have mourned long and deeply
now that the tears have ceased
except when we speak
from the mountain where I am
to below the level of the sea
where you now stay

This house has no echoes
save for the memory of yours
my footsteps are soundless
as though I walk on foam
and it seems at times
as though I too have disappeared
and am a ghost in my own home

On the radio
the Black Orpheus
plays a mournful tune

Now or before or soon,
we all must mourn

And be mourned…

****

Quickly

So quickly my darling
now three Springs have flown
since we declared our love
optimistic as buds and blossoms
and migrating storks

Reborn were we
and how many lifetimes
have we known?

There was an angel
in your coffee grinds
its wingspan more than half the cup

When you left
an ocean of irises bade you farewell
and the dove couple disappeared

And you metamorphosed into a shadow
the sun went out
and the you that was
disappeared into darkness

I surrender to that angel
I am numb