Helen Bar-Lev
Helen Bar-Lev was born in New York City in 1942. She has lived in Israel for 36 years. Since 1976 Helen has devoted herself to art: painting, teaching and writing poetry. From 1989 - 2001 she was a member of the Safad Artists’ Colony where she had her own gallery. To date Bar-Lev has had 80 exhibitions, including 30 one-person shows. Her poems and paintings have appeared in numerous online journals and print anthologies. ‘Cyclamens and Swords’ with poems of Israel by Helen and Johnmichael Simon and Helen’s paintings has been published by Ibbetson Press, Boston, Mass. Helen is Editor-in-Chief of the Voices Israel annual Anthology.
The following works are copyright © 2008. All rights reserved. No distribution or reprinting in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Tuesday
for Mira
It’s Tuesday in the Land
on a cloudy dawn
filled with birdchirps
and the coolness of autumn
and I wish myself a bird
a bird without territories
without boundaries
free of constraints
relieved of restraints
to fly away
from this shell of myself
this hollow of a body
and soar over the people,
the pettiness,
the aggressiveness,
to fly away from pain
to soar into the light
into the sun
and be done
never to tread
this difficult Earth again
City Revisited
forMira
As I walk through the city
where I lived for twelve strange years,
its previous seediness nearly gone,
now endowed with a sophistication
which does not seem to suit it,
I feel no nostalgia,
not for my home nor the streets,
nor for the shops, replaced by others,
fresher, more enthusiastic
In this city,
where Romans left their artifacts
underneath my home,
a few old friends pass by,
wrinkled, almost unrecognizable –
and I?
smiles exchanged as though
a decade has not passed
This city, where I lived an alien
for a dozen years,
repulses me and I must escape
and as I do so and the streets retreat
into my past so that I may once again
forget them, I pass your home
And my heart pauses with the mourning
I’d thought gone, unbidden memories flash
like meteoritic showers
and I choke on these reminiscences,
know I could never have existed here
without you
Sleep in a Heat Wave
I am a parched person
defeated by the heat
that seeps through the blanket,
emanates from the sheet,
waiting for morning
to be relieved of sleeplessness
And all I can do,
ineffectual intellectual,
is thrash my discomfort
to a bed unresponsive
to a cat uncaring
to a morning almost dawned,
to a Tuesday that mocks me,
is to attempt to bargain
with the angels of sleep
for another hour,
preferably two,
but they too mock,
amused
As the birds begin
to chirp their greetings
to a Tuesday morning
and the night grays into day,
I lie here and ponder
how poetry picks these moments
of in-between-ness
to manifest
Next I know
I am emerging from a dream,
nondescript and unremembered,
conscious of ancient music
emanating from the radio,
chanting its monotone,
always soothing,
in this still very early morning
Heat wave days pass
at a slower pace
and sleep and heat
are not compatible
bed fellows
My Life
I write of my life
in a poem
not a tome
condense it
compress it
into some lines
to sum up a lifetime
not to shock
nor to bore
nor to repulse
or misrepresent myself
not to cause envy
a poem for all the family
no sexual explicitness
no bashing of ex-s
no bragging of accomplishments
no complaining of pains
just a poet on a quest
an obsessed artist
searching for her niche
in a difficult planet
Spring is the Season of Hope
I hope, says the willow,
and overnight it metamorphoses
from bare to green
The daffodil dares bloom
bright yellow on the backdrop
of snow, hoping for warmth
The storks return to Europe,
remembering their nests,
hoping for new families
I am an optimist says the iris,
I hope therefore I am
The fruit trees blossom,
hoping for bounty
Calves and lambs,
puppies and kittens
frolic and hope
for compassion
This year I observe the willow,
love the daffodil
photograph the storks
sketch the iris
gasp at the fruit trees
And feel the surge of hope
burst through the freeze
of a difficult winter
