Reading A Poem In Translation Is Like

When My Parents Were Liberated, Four Years Before I Was Born, They Found That The Ordinary World Outside The Camp Had Been Eradicated. There Was No More Simple Meal, No Thing Was Less Than Extraordinary: A Fork, A Mattress, A Clean Shirt, A Book. Not To Mention Such Things That Can Make One Weep: An Orange, Meat And Vegetables, Hot Water. There Was No Ordinariness To Return To, No Refuge From The Blinding Potency Of Things, An Apple Screaming Its Sweet Juice.

I See That I Must Give What I Most Need.

Trees For Example, Carry The Memory Of Rainfal. In Their Rings We Read Ancient Weather - Storms, Sunlight And Temperatures, The Growing Seasons Of Centuries. A Forest Shares A History Which Each Tree Remembers Even After It Has Been Felled.

Even As A Child, Even As My Blood-past Was Drained From Me, I Understood That If I Were Strong Enough To Accept It, I Was Being Offered A Second History.

Like Other Ghosts, She Whispers; Not For Me To Join Her, But So That, When I'm Close Enough, She Can Push Me Back Into The World.