The Crow Shouts | Poem

 

The Crows Shout
 

The crows now shout in
The cold winter, gliding
and black
As the young soldiers' ghosts
Whose dear faces now climb
up to the treetops, then stop suspended in
The branches . . . the crows shout,
Haunted, abruptly quarreling
Because they feel the boys' vapor breath;
They leap in the evening's soft air,
Then drop at last, with drooped wings
And empty throats, resting as if betrayed
By silences or lack of protests.
Tomorrow they'll take flight and vanish,
ending far from here, without stopping once.

© All Copyright Elisha Porat

Translated from Hebrew by Ward Kelley

to Elisha

to Moongate
 
 

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