Being in the Budding Field*
Our days flow dateless into nights
whose balm of cool and distant lights
soon melts beneath the searing dawns
of endless thirsty Negev morns.
Our heat-drugged forms ghost languid ways
through hanging dust that overlays
all muscle, feeling, thought and sense
with plodding, peaceful somnolence.
A-dream we walk, our veins shot full
of sun; our brains detach, annul
the links that joined us to the fates
of urgent lives beyond these gates.
Tia Azulay 03Sep90-20Feb07
Copyright © 1990, 2007 Tia Azulay
*“budding field” is a translation of the Hebrew “Sde Nitzan”. The title refers to the poet’s time as a labourer in the flower fields of Moshav Sde Nitzan in the Negev Desert—amongst other things