Renowned poet and Hebrew translator of Greek drama, Aharon Shabtai, now 85, has a new collection, Requiem and Other Poems, translated by Peter Cole, that spans the early years of Israel to the days just after 7 October 2023. The book, although concise at just 87 pages, provides a vivid and comprehensive look at a writer who has spent his life promoting peace.

The book is centered around an epic poem set from the end of the British Mandate to the early years of the State of Israel. “Requiem”, from which the book takes its title, reads almost like the Homeric poems Shabtai has translated from Greek to Hebrew. It’s the highlight of the book, forms its second section, and is a lovely look at his childhood in Tel Aviv and the vibrancy of the streets he walked down each day. Shabtai penned this poem in 2022.

Look,

here’s Aharon

coming out

of school

bookbag on

his back

starting to flee

along Frischman

and down Frug

from the twins

Amiram and Giora

But it’s not  just these boys he needs to fear. In another section, his father strikes his back with a belt. A few pages later, he writes about fleeing to his kibbutz’s bomb shelter.
 

Life begins

with a siren

in the middle of the night,

with all of the neighbors

descending

to the shelter

beneath the ground

and afterwards climbing

back up and dispersing

and then as usual

coming back

Shabtai’s father works as a carpenter and is part of is part of the largest trade union, the Histadrut. His father in a later part feels disillusioned by Stalin.

We sing

Russian songs

“Wide and mighty,

O Dnipro, Dnipro”

And at home

father tears

down from the clothes closet

the pictures of Stalin

The poem is bookended with a section that deals with 7 October 2023 and with how Shabtai views his final years and his death. The first section opens with “Tikkun”, which translates to “mending” in English. Shabtai wrote this page-long poem on 10 October 2023 with the message that mending this century-old conflict can only happen from:

someone opening their eyes,

someone who speaks with compassion,

someone listening

someone learning and wise

someone waiting and thinking

someone guiding someone

down a path of kindness, affection

A few pages later, Shabtai has time to reflect on the war and pens four poems in February 2024 and one a year later in October 2024. One of the February 2024 poems, “On the Situation of the State”, criticizes “Good Benjy” for caring only about his own power, while “Curriculum Vitae” discusses the Shoah, or the mass murder of Jews during World War Two, and now the destruction on 7 October, the deadliest attack of Jews since. Shabtai was born in Tel Aviv in 1939, at the start of the War in Europe. In this poem, he writes:
 

I grew up

and then grew old,

my back is bent,

my eyes have settled on books.

Now darkness is falling

there in the window.

The final part of the book is short like the first and Shabtai uses it to reflect on the final chapter of his life. There’s a poem titled “The Quiet” in which he predicts the stillness of his home after he dies and one titled “From ‘Aharon’” which covers topics like death, oblivion, the end, fear, happiness, and balance, among others. In the last part about balance, he concludes:

And when it’s bad for Aharon,

when there is no love,

and the body’s weak and aching.

he prepares for death

Aharon will vanish

and there will be only Aharon’s poems

This poem was written ten years ago and thankfully Shabtai is still around to see this collection in print. His poems are easy to understand and a good example of how poetry can beautifully depict one’s home, in good times and in bad.

Susan Blumberg-Kason is the author of Bernardine’s Shanghai Salon: The Story of the Doyenne of Old China, Good Chinese Wife: A Love Affair with China Gone Wrong and When Friends Come From Afar: The Remarkable Story of Bernie Wong and Chicago’s Chinese American Service League.