Dahlia Ravikovitch’s Hovering at Low Altitude describes what we do with heart-wrenching directness. We watch from a safe distance and pretend we do not see. We see and pretend we cannot act. We act but we are careful not to do anything that threatens our own existence. No matter what we say, neither justice nor mercy takes precedence when we engage the world from the comfort of our living rooms.
In Hovering at Low Altitude, the pre-announced rape and murder of one girl stands
for an entire people. The one who repeats “I am not here” stands for an entire
class, the educated elite, voyeurs of injustice of which they are
co-responsible, as they know well, by sins of omission and commission. I belong
to that elite. Since you are reading this blog, so do you.
In order to fully grasp the nettle of this
poem, you have to know your Hebrew Bible. Ravikovitch wrote
poetry in her youth filled with complex allusions to a very large canon of
literature. In her maturity, she whittled her canon down until she was left
with not much more than her lived experience and the Bible whose every word is pregnant with the ages. The result
is piercing.
Through the latticework of the poetic text,
pre-texts peek through. Cant 1:5-8; Isa 3:16-26; Ps 121; Deut 22:23-24; Isa 40:22;
40:2. (This is not to claim that Ravikovitch had all of these in mind
when she composed the poem.) The paintings of Chagall, in which people hover in
mid-air. A shepherd girl rises early to tend a herd of black goats and heads to
the hills with them: I have seen it. The poet watches scenes of violence. So do
we. Tiananmen
Square, Srebrenica,
the Rwandan_genocide. We have pictures, we were witnesses.
The Armenian Genocide,
still not condemned by the US government, because in God we *do not* trust. Not to mention the treatment given to the people Ravikovitch supported as best she knew how: the Palestinians.
What
wobbly-kneed wretches we are.
רחיפה בגובה נמוך
Hovering at Low Altitude
אני
לא כאן
אני
על נקיקי הרים מזרחיים
מנומרים
פסות של קרח
במקום
שעשב לא צמח
וצל רחב נטוש על המורד
I am not
here.
I’m on top
of the crags of the eastern mountains
dappled
with patches of ice
where grass
doesn't sprout
and a broad
shadow is spread over the slope.
רועה
קטנה עם צאן עזים
שחורות
הגיחה
שם
מאהל
לא נראה
לא
תוציא את יומה הילדה הזאת
במרעה
A little
shepherd girl with a herd of goats
– black ones
–
burst on
the scene
from an
unseen tent.
She won't bring her day to a close, that girl,
in the
pasture. . . .
והקטנה
השכימה כה לקום אל המרעה
גרונה
אינו נטוי
עיניה
לא קרועות בפוך, לא משׂקרות
אינה
שואלת, מאין יבוא עזרי
The little
one rose early to take her place in the pasture.
Her neck is
not outstretched,
Her eyes
are not lined with kohl, not done up with mascara,
she doesn't
ask, “From whence cometh my help?”
אני
לא כאן
אני
כבר בהרים ימים רבים
אור
לא יצרבני. הכפור בי לא יגע.
שוב
אין לי מה ללקות בתדהמה.
דברים
גרועים מאלה ראיתי בחיי.
I am not
here.
I've been
in the mountains for a long time already.
The light
will not scorch me. Me the frost will not touch.
Nothing any
more is able to batter me with amazement.
Worse
things than these I’ve seen in my life.
אני
אוספת שמלתי ומרחפת
סמוך
מאד אל הקרקע.
מה
היא חשבה לה הילדה הזאת?
פראית
למראה, לא רחוצה
לרגע
משתופפת בכריעה.
I pull my
dress toward me and hover,
low to the
ground.
What was
she thinking, that girl?
Wild in
appearance, unwashed,
for a
moment she bends down, knees flexed.
לחייה
רכה כמשי
פצעי
קור על גב ידה,
פזורת
דעת כביכול
קשובה
לאמתו של דבר.
ועוד
נותרו לה כך וכך שעות.
Her cheeks
soft like silk,
frostbite
on the back of her hand,
her mind
distracted, seemingly,
in fact
she's intent.
She still
has a few hours left.
אני
לא בענין הזה הגיתי.
מחשבותי
רפדוני ברפידה של מוך
מצאתי
לי שיטה פשוטה מאד,
לא
מדרך כף רגל ולא מעוף
רחיפה בגובה נמוך.
The situation
I don’t mull over.
My thoughts
cushion me like a cushion of down.
I've found
a very simple method,
not a
foot-breadth away, not moving a wing,
I hover at low
altitude.
אבל
בנטות צהרים
שעות
רבות
לאחר
הזריחה
עלה
האיש ההוא בהר
כמטפס
לפי תומו.
והילדה
קרובה אליו מאד
ואין
איש זולתם.
ואם
נסתה להתחבא או צעקה
אין
מסתור בהרים.
Even so
while the midday stretched on,
many hours
after
sunrise,
that man went
up the mountain,
to all
appearances a simple mountain climber.
The girl is
right next to him,
no one is
there except them.
If she fled
for cover, or cried out—
there would
be no place to hide in the mountains.
אני
לא כאן
אני
מעל רכסי הרים פרועים ואיומים
בפאתי
מזרח.
ענין
שאין צריכים להתעכב עליו.
אפשר
בטלטלה עזה וברחיפה
לחוג
במהירות הרוח.
אפשר
להסתלק ולדבר על לב עצמי:
אני
דבר לא ראיתי.
I am not
here.
I'm on top
of the precipices of savage, awesome mountains
in the extremities
of the East.
No need to
elaborate on the situation.
With a single
hard twirl, it’s possible to hover
and make a
circle with the speed of the wind.
It’s
possible to get away and reassure myself:
I didn’t
see a thing.
והקטנה
עיניה רק חרגו מחוריהן
חכה
יבש כחרס,
כשיד
קשה לפתה את שערה ואחזה בה
ללא
קורטוב חמלה
But the
little one, her eyes bulged from their sockets,
her palate
dry as a potsherd,
when a hard
hand held her hair tight, and gripped her
without a
shred of pity.
כל השירים עד כה, עמ' 219-221
The above translation is
my own. Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld’s translation is beautiful. Go here.
Here and there I followed their lead, but mostly I went my own way. As Michael Pitkowsky pointed out to me, the reference to the "eastern mountains" may allude to a preferred vacation destination of hip young Israelis: Nepal and similar.
Bibliography
Dahlia
Ravikovitch, Hovering at a Low Altitude: The Collected Poetry of
Dahlia Ravikovitch (Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld, introd. and
tr.; New York: Norton, 2009) 32-33; Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld, “Dahlia
Ravikovitch: An Introduction,” Prooftexts 28 (2008) 249-281; 273-74
gorgeous translation and beautiful title for the whole collection. the poems are both hopeful and depairing. i don't know when the poems were written, but the translation is so well done that i feel as if i am in an old world. things seem simpler, but when the world has fewer external pulls on it, emotions and relationships take on a "heightened" posture. or heightened to us today, anyway. lovely and haunting, john.
Posted by: nancy bogue | June 02, 2009 at 03:16 PM
i made a post a few minutes ago, prior to reading the introduction and what the poem was about. after reading what it is about, i don't know now if the poem is "hopeful". do others find any hope in it?
Posted by: nancy bogue | June 02, 2009 at 03:25 PM
Hi Nancy,
I find the poem hopeful, despite everything, because it is truthful. "I didn't see a thing," we want to say, but ultimately, we can't say that.
We do see injustice around us, including injustice we are responsible for to some degree. The next question can only be, what then shall we do?
Externally, superficially, it is possible to twirl the top and hover away to a beach somewhere in the Caribbean. But internally, within our spirits, it should not be possible to do so.
Posted by: JohnFH | June 02, 2009 at 05:03 PM