In Coming Here

A love poem from my father

©Orly Avineri

Last Monday I turned 67. Life is peculiar sometimes, perhaps quite often. Full of mystery. I haven’t thought for a long while about this poem my father wrote to me almost 60 years ago, and then it popped in my mind.

With some deeper thought, I got it. It was written to me in 1967. I just turned 67.

It was written to me at the time of the Six Day War, one of the wars, one of many, dedicated to eradicating once more the lives of the natives of the land, Arab Palestinians, who had the audacity to ask for their lives, freedom back. Their land too.

I won’t tire you, so in short, in Israel, after completing military service men are assigned to the military reserve forces. My father, and most fathers, as reservists would disappear for a few weeks a year to serve. Especially in war time. Sadly, we all got used to that.

My father, who was no longer with my mother finally allowed her to take care of me and my brother while he went away on this ‘important mission’. I was told that before he left I said to him: Try to run between the bullets (dodge the bullets). Nonchalantly.

I probably knew, as ridiculous as it sounded, it was a good advice. It still is. My father was gone for a few weeks even though this war’s name was The Six Day War. My father was an activist, against all this senselessness, yet had no choice whether to join or not.

I grew up in great dichotomy. I was also in the army, like all girls in Israel, all working together for the common cause of making this land ours. Completely. My father taught me a lot, and without him, I wouldn’t be as angry as I am, fierce, combative, and aware!

He was impassioned and volatile, and also highly sensitive, raw, complex, and poetic. Self contradicting like myself, and many tender souls I meet in my own life. I forgive him for his transgressions as I want to be forgiven for mine. He wrote me this poem.

©Orly Avineri

He came to my mother’s house, after weeks of being gone. He visited with me and my brother for a couple of hours, and then had to go back to his unit. Before he left, he wrote the poem, in my ‘memory book’.

It’s a sort of a diary, a collection of poems and dedications other people /children mostly write one another. I saved this page from that book. It’s in my father’s hand writing, which was beautiful. The rest is gone. It’s now kept in one of my art journals.

Here it is. In Hebrew it rhymes. It’s more moving. I’ve translated it to English. It may sound a bit awkward, but its meaning feels the truest. Most preserved. It’s in my heart forever, and I know it by heart too.

Here it is, in Hebrew, phonetically broken in English, and its translation. It’s beautiful to me. The title image is from a journal spread I have created with this poem in mind. My mother, father, both offering homes, and in the end there was no home, livable, at all.

Reading in Hebrew for you, then my translation to English..

~~~

לאורלי חמדתי

בבואי לכאן

את געגועיי השקטתי

וכעת לאן?

אמשיך להגות אני

בך ילדתי

עד שובך אל קני

~~~~~~

Leh’Orly chemdati

Beh’voh’ee leh’chahn

Et gah’ah’goo’ay Hishkahteti

Veh’chah’et leh’ahn?

Amshich leh’hagot anih

Bach yaldati

Ad shoovech el kanih.

~~~~~~

To Orly, my Precious

In coming here

My longings I have quieted

And now, where?

I will go on

Musing

On you my child

Till your return to my nest

~~~~~~

I realize that the metaphor of nests, birds building nests, homes, temporary dwellings, have always been connected to all that I am, how I teach, how I live, how I love, and how deeply I ache. My unrealized dreams of home. All in this body from the beginning.

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🤎🤍🖤

Orly