"Ktovet" group

Lyor Shternberg

Poet and translator Lyor Shternberg was born in Petah Tikva in 1967. He lives in
Jerusalem and teaches literature, writing and film. A graduate of the Helicon writing
workshops, and holder of a Master's degree from Hebrew University, he was awarded the Prime Minister's Prize for Hebrew writers in 2006.
Shternberg has published 4 volumes of poetry to date.
In the warm light, 2008
The Page is Landscape, 2004
The Day's Labour, 2001
Home, 1999

He translates from English, specializing in Irish poets. Lately, his translations of Patrick Kavanaugh (Selected Poems by Patrick kavanagh, 2005) were published.

More about Shternberd you can read at:
* PIW - an international poetry site



THE PAGE IS A LANDSCAPE / Lyor Shterenberg

I place a few shrubs to its south, (close
to my chest). Further north on a random
white hill, a young woman from the past
sits and plucks petals from a daisy she picked near
where the pen touches now.

It's not easy to contain all one sees. The eye-
fan trembles from strain
and sun. The greatest temptation
is to abandon everything and slide, silent
as a dune, into the dark
and I would have unless I had known
the page would not disappear.

This is how we live. Dark
or discovered, by turns. You, me, the bastard
page, much loved, a reminder not to leave,
and the young woman too (grown, meanwhile,
and more beautiful) who has finished plucking flower petals
and floats gently now
between the lines -

her arms spread wide, hair
breathing in the blue afternoon light.
Don't worry. She
stays