Poem
Rachel
Our Garden
to Chana Meisel
Spring and early morning –
do you remember that spring, that day? –
our garden at the foot of Mount Carmel,
facing the blue of the bay?
You are standing under an olive,
and I, like a bird on a spray,
am perched on the silvery tree-top.
We are cutting black branches away.
From below, your saw’s rhythmic buzzing
reaches me in my tree,
and I rain down from above you
fragments of poetry.
Remember that morning, that gladness?
They were – and disappeared,
like the short spring of our country,
the short spring of our years.
© Translation: 1994, Jean Shapiro Cantu. Robert Friend
From: Flowers of Perhaps: Selected Poems of Rachel
Publisher: Menard, London, 1994
From: Flowers of Perhaps: Selected Poems of Rachel
Publisher: Menard, London, 1994
OUR GARDEN
![](/media/4/3267_poem_r-90.gif)
Poems
Poems of Rachel
Close
Our Garden
to Chana Meisel
Spring and early morning –
do you remember that spring, that day? –
our garden at the foot of Mount Carmel,
facing the blue of the bay?
You are standing under an olive,
and I, like a bird on a spray,
am perched on the silvery tree-top.
We are cutting black branches away.
From below, your saw’s rhythmic buzzing
reaches me in my tree,
and I rain down from above you
fragments of poetry.
Remember that morning, that gladness?
They were – and disappeared,
like the short spring of our country,
the short spring of our years.
© 1994, Jean Shapiro Cantu. Robert Friend
From: Flowers of Perhaps: Selected Poems of Rachel
Publisher: 1994, Menard, London
From: Flowers of Perhaps: Selected Poems of Rachel
Publisher: 1994, Menard, London
Our Garden
to Chana Meisel
Spring and early morning –
do you remember that spring, that day? –
our garden at the foot of Mount Carmel,
facing the blue of the bay?
You are standing under an olive,
and I, like a bird on a spray,
am perched on the silvery tree-top.
We are cutting black branches away.
From below, your saw’s rhythmic buzzing
reaches me in my tree,
and I rain down from above you
fragments of poetry.
Remember that morning, that gladness?
They were – and disappeared,
like the short spring of our country,
the short spring of our years.
© 1994, Jean Shapiro Cantu. Robert Friend
From: Flowers of Perhaps: Selected Poems of Rachel
Publisher: 1994, Menard, London
From: Flowers of Perhaps: Selected Poems of Rachel
Publisher: 1994, Menard, London
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