At the End of Sleep, between worlds

Published: Feb. 1, 2017, 6 a.m.

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On this week\'s episode, host Marcela Sulak reads selections of poet Tal Nitz\\xe1n\'s book At the End of Sleep. It\'s an anthology of her poems, translated from the Hebrew by Tal Nitz\\xe1n, Vivian Eden, Irit Sela, Aliza Raz, and Rachel Tzvia Back.\\xa0Here is an excerpt from her poem "In the Time of Cholera":

"Facing one another
we turn our backs to the world\\u2019s calamities.
Behind our closed eyes and curtains,
both heat and war erupted at once.
The heat will calm down first,
the faint breeze won\\u2019t bring back
the boys who have been shot,
won\\u2019t cool down the wrath of the living.
Even if it tarry, the fire will come,
many waters won\\u2019t quench, etc.
Our arms as well
can only reach our own bodies:
We are a small crowd
incited to bite, to cling to each other,
to barricade ourselves in bed
while in the ozone above us,
a mocking smile cracks wide open."

Nitzan\\u2019s poems are often concerned with the discrepancies between the domestic and\\xa0internal world, and the injustice of the exterior world in which the most private bodies are placed.\\xa0In June 2015 we featured the work of the poet Tal Nitz\\xe1n. You can find a link to that podcast here.

Text:
At the End of Sleep, An Anthology, by Tal Nitz\\xe1n. Translated by Tal Nitz\\xe1n, Vivian Eden, Irit Sela, Aliza Raz, and Rachel Tzavia Back. Restless Books, 2014.

Music:
Big Lazy - Amnesia
Big Lazy - Elephant Walk

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