White Swan

 

Poem written by my father, Zeev Kachel

Lay your head here. Withering around us

Is the garden, with golden reveries all.

In its feverish languishing, like in life’s remorse

A final flame has been ignited by the fall.

Leaves are ֿdropping out… The wind devours them

For distant turns in the mist of time.

Thunder roars. Abandoned, orphaned in this realm

Is the path we never finished to the sublime. 

Oh, don’t you cry, white swan on the horizon —

A golden dream that vanished into space.

More springs will come to quicken pulse, to widen

A turbulent core in the deepest place.

If I pass on, somewhere there's a poem I wrote

For you. It’ll never wither, never be defiled. 

In it you’re forever young, a dream I loved the most

Queen of queens of the garden, ruling over the Nile.

[1948]

This poem, dedicated to my mother, was written around the time they married. It was also the year my father became a free man after months of being held as a prisoner of war in Jordan, in the hands of the Arab Legion. 

His love to a woman twenty years younger than him as well as the dangers he faced in captivity mark the first time he faced his own mortality, the first time he envisioned what would be left behind once he's gone.

Can We Still Love

Poetry

Paperback ★ Hardcover 

Audiobook

In an era that is amazement and wonder on one hand, and destruction and hate on the other, and facing the threat of an even more horrific holocaust in our future, two poets present a piercing question: can we still love? And love means one another, human to human.

This book is the 'I believe' statement of the poet, author and artist Zeev Kachel, a man whose most closely-held values and aspirations have been put to the test in the course of WWI and WWII. It is also the 'I believe' statement of his daughter, USA Today bestselling author, poet and artist Uvi Poznansky, who compiled her own work alongside his, and translated his poems from Hebrew so they can become an inspiring force to you.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“I was immediately introduced to a collection of poems that not only touched me, they sprung me directly into what it is like to be at war…”