Thursday Poem

Pears

...The pears are not seen
...as the observer wills
.............Wallace Stevens

1
Sometimes they are pears.
At other times sirens in a basket.
And not so often, violins
one tunes with a stem.

2
Pears hold their heads up high
they have cello-shaped waists and
curvy hips.
Buddha adapted their way of sitting
in order to reside inside
nothingness.

3
The pears are dressed in a green suit
with red pockets.
The poets among them wear
a felt fedora with a leaf.

4
Their single hair jumps to attention
or curves like a whip, raised against
the clay-ness of the bowl, the
pressing of fingers,
of teeth.

5
The great communist painter,
Pablo Picasso, framed them into
cubes.
With lopped heads they resemble
their common bretheren, the apples.

6
Their shadow is like sudden
excitement,
a breathtaking leap that ends
in disenchantment:
the murmur of the stem, the echo of
the leaf.


by Shai Dotan

from On the Verge;
publisher: Am Oved, Tel Aviv, 2005
translation:Ohad Stadler, 2008