Cyclamens and Swords

IN THE MAIL:  Helen Bar-Lev and Johnmichael Simon, “Cyclamens and Swords” (Ibbetson Press:  2007), a book of poems and illustrations, with this description by Canadian poet Katherine L. Gordon:

The achingly beautiful cover of timeless trees, earth, flowers and rock, is redolent of Israel’s destiny. . . .  This land seems to symbolize the eternal quest for harmony where forces of turmoil march ceaselessly.  Bar-Lev and Simon explore this theme for us. 

Cyclamens and Swords will become a treasured classic, echoing as it does so fluently, the longing, fearing and questing that marks these troubled times.  Helen Bar-Lev’s poem “Beauty” sums up the reader’s feelings as we reluctantly finish this special book:  “and I, the ingrate, ever insatiable, implore you, please, show me more.”

Helen Bar-Lev was born in New York City and has lived in Israel for 36 years.  She holds a degree in Anthropology and paints and teaches in Jerusalem, where she is the Editor-in-Chief of the Voices Israel English annual anthology.  Johnmichael Simon was born in Northampton, England and has lived in Israel for 46 years; he is a member of the editorial board of Voices Israel.  Here is the title poem, by Helen Bar-Lev:

Life should be sunflowers and poetry

symphonies and four o’clock tea

instead it’s entangled

like necklaces in a drawer

when you reach in for cyclamens

you pull out swords.

This is a country

which devours its inhabitants,

spits them out hollow like the shells of seeds,

defies them to survive

despite the peacelessness,

promises them cyclamens

but rewards them with swords

It is here we live with

symphonies and sunflowers,

poetry and four o’clock tea,

enmeshed in an absurd

passion for this land

entangled as we are in its history,

like butterflies in a net

or sheep in a barbed wire fence

Where we are forbidden

to pick cyclamens

but are obliged

to wield our swords.