Gad Kaynar-Kissinger
Shells
Now that everything closed down,
That vain display windows
Withdraw inward and whisper
Like traitors:
You could have dispensed with us long ago.
Now that stages expose their misshapen
Backs, that tablecloths are pulled off
Tables in luxury restaurants
Like a seductive brassiere from the prosthetic
Silicon breasts of a first-class stripper,
Now that the belly is sucked in to silence
The bellows of the stalled ox,
Now that credit cards are converted to
Fortunetellers’ cards calculating
Galactic Cataclysms,
And all the accountants
Consider how much more they can subtract
From their heavy
Clients so that they may
Elevate in the refracted light
Ascend upon the shaky rectitude
Of the spirit toward
The shells.
Toward themselves.
—Translated by Natalie Feinstein
Gad Kaynar-Kissinger is the author of the Hebrew language poetry collection Selfi (Safra Publishing, 2018), among many other books of poetry and prose. His poems in English translation have recently appeared in Atlas and Alice, Pidgeonholes, The Bombay Review, and Anomaly. A stage, TV and film actor, Kaynar-Kissinger has translated some 70 plays into Hebrew from English, German, Norwegian and Swedish. He was awarded the Norwegian Order of Merit for his translations of Henrik Ibsen’s works into Hebrew. Until his retirement, Kaynar-Kissinger was a professor of theater studies at Tel Aviv University.
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