Poem by Israeli poet Amir Or,  composed by Japanese composer Tomohisa Hashimoto.

Hand over hand.  (What broke out – touches.)

-6-

You say: to be penetrated, to penetrate. Sea-sand, sand-sea
verging on the very centre.  Words fall between us		

like something broken.  Listen, I love you.
But you, having it only your way, exist, exist, exist.

You are not being paid for this and still,	
Mr. and Mrs. Other, you stroll along the street as if	

you’re only a name and have no navel.  I
act like you, repeat the movements	

which you repeat.  Tell me, reflection - 	
I throw another stone at you - is anyone more actual than me?  

I say sand-sea, sea-sand.  Like something 		
broken: a multiplication of faces, legs and hands        like something     

that’s there.  So: enough.  Come back to me.  I’ll let you go   	
as often as you like.

Now there’s no longer a difference between us, except this poem 
where some sort of a world lives.  Another possibility,

not really different: here, you don’t leave at all. 	
You don’t stop coming for a moment.  I open

a mirror and turn its pages in front of what’s already
written. It’s what you are: sadness in front of the blue evening sky,

anger, insult, longing sucking the blue from your chest 
or happiness that suddenly spills in front of the blue     of that evening sky; 

it’s a voice which accompanies what, looking,
I see now or don’t see. And I see you: 

world by world, now by now, one
and yet another one.  In this poem that stumbles from page	

to page you watch and flicker between letter and letter			 
and vanish - present in every one of these apparently silent centimeters -

and don’t stop coming, and not really coming.  So enough, please, 
don’t hide everywhere, talk to me, all of you at once.  

Translated from Hebrew by Helena Berg

01 To Love, To Love Me, To Love Us

השיר "בוא" מאת אמיר אור בהלחנה וביצוע של יסמין אבן. מתוך הספר 'החיה שבלב' (קשב, 2010)

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