Translated from the Hebrew by Lisa Katz
Beyond the equator is a table.
When you stand at the door,
New York, Gibraltar and London sway gently above it.
But the soul is Africa.
The way time etches tattoos on bodies,
you might have guessed.
Once there was a different season here.
Colonialism saved us.
I couldn’t conceive of my life in singular,
rather in twos, the other always consuming mine.
Now only we savages remain.
Adam, Eve, I’ve grown so far from you.
Wherever you are, I’m always on the other side,
and I hop from past to past after you
with pale Infant Time shrinking in my arms.