Your faces gaze at us: young, wrinkled, tanned, pale, your eyes brown, black, blue, fierce, bespectacled, or not, trapped for a moment in the amused eye of someone you love, on an outing, birthday, holiday, party, a large gathering, long-haired, short-haired, crewcut, tinted, bald, the feathery hair of an infant, the hair of a four-year-old, you are bearded, mustachioed, with side locks, shaved in effect, wearing a tank top, a bathing suit, a sun hat made of straw or white cloth, whose brim flutters in the vacation’s warm breeze, you wear a stocking cap, a silly tourist hat, a baseball cap, you’re from a kibbutz, a farming village, you’re from some community, a small town, the big city, it’s summer, it’s winter, you’re in the country, you’re abroad, blinded by the sun, drenched in the rain, faded, weathered, snatched from walls, posts, fences, bus stations, notice boards, some of you have already closed your eyes, one-year-old to eighty-six, you number one-hundred-thirty-six, your names are the names of our children, our mothers, our fathers, our sisters, our brothers, our grandparents, our lovers, our friends, our neighbors.
We speak of you when we stay at home and when we set out and when we lie down and
when we rise up and bind the yellow sign to our hands and one-hundred-twenty-three
red days in the hourglass are a symbol upon our foreheads:
now now now now now now.
Note: The poem was written on the 123rd day of the war, when 136 of those kidnapped to Gaza remained in captivity.
Translated to English by Lisa Katz
