Unraveling

By Dory Manor

How can you sing yourself a lullaby?
How can you believe that you are all alone?
You unravel from your childhood like a thread from a cloak
And nothing in nature can bring sleep to your eyes.

You travel in your soul to Lithuania or Spain
To the north of time and the west of your mind
You build yourself a gondola and row from vein to vein
And nothing in nature can bring sleep to your eyes.

Beneath a white quilt you sense in your head
Your mother bending over you, canopying the bed
And you sing and you hear yourself sing the lullaby
And nothing in nature can bring sleep to your eyes.


Translated from Hebrew by Vivian Eden.

This poem previously appeared in Ha'eretz.