“To start love like this: with a cannon shot / like Ramadan. / …That’s a religion! That’s a love!”

Navit Barel writes: “We ate apples dipped in honey. Free admission / to the sweet and happy years…”

“Once, when summer vacation stretched over the whole summer and tasted of sand and smelled of grapes and a redhead sun daubed freckles on your face…”

Yona Wallach had an astonishing impact on Hebrew literature during her short life, ushering in a feminist revolution in Israeli poetry.

“The Property” is about an Israeli grandmother and her granddaughter getting to know Warsaw as they try to reclaim a family property lost during WWII.

“Seconds before bursting into flames the boy sent out a cry / that his father, hanging farther down in perfect balance / could not make out…”

“Did she bark? I have to know if she barked. And how the echo sounded in that narrow space. If it sounded like distant dogs answering her.”

“It was preferable to restrict encounters with adherents of another faith and to be content, at least for the greater part of the way, to travel by sea.”

“It was preferable to restrict encounters with adherents of another faith and to be content, at least for the greater part of the way, to travel by sea.”

“Babies drop into the world, / like rain falling in the dark / from a gigantic hand into shafts, / into a spider’s tent, a cold apple.”