Well, I was gone
it was on the day the mouth widened open in front of
a vacant audience
a hall world, devoid of ears
and started shouting
As it happened
the hearing merits were sealed
and the hall world faded out to mute
and silence was hovering over the face of the earth
such
a white silence
well bleached
You know,
unlike a wedding dress
like Butoh dancers
white linen cloths with a pinch of pure soul within
white washed face
and a drizzling drop of blood that escaped the ear’s cave
all of that, in front of a vacant audience
Do you know how it feels to shout in front the hollow hall world
Familiar with the colossal reverberation?
If the hall world does not mute
the eardrum could explode
hence
there is no voice, nor any that answers
you stand alone in the life capsule
open wide within a body
tr. Nadavi Noked
——
Lali Tsipi Michaeli is an international Israeli poet, born in Georgia in 1964. She immigrated to Israel at the age of seven. She has published six poetry books so far and attended international poetry events in New York, Georgia, Italy France, Romania, and India. She was part of a residency program for talented writers in New York in 2018.
Her books have been translated into foreign languages. Soon her book The Mad House will be published in NYC. Lali was defined by Prof. Gabriel Moked in his book as an “Erotico-Urban Poet” and is highly regarded by critics, who consider her innovative and combative. Lali talks in her poems about the state of the world and man in our age, the loneliness of man in the technological age. In her apocalyptic poem, published in a political literary journal YEHI, she spares no rage and reproach and positions herself as a prophet of fury. In 2011 Lali conducted an anthology for protest, Resistance, in which she presents her personal poetic manifesto, claiming that “poetry as a whole is a revolt.” In the past decade, Lali has created 15 Poetry Video Art pieces that have taken part in world poetry festivals such as ZEBRA in Berlin, where she reads her poems in public spaces, expanding the circle of poetry consumers. “The poem is not purely purely individual. It is common ground and should be heard in a great voice,” the poet claims.
Lali teaches Hebrew at Ben Gurion University. She has one son and lives in Tel Aviv by the sea.