*** and Other Poems

By Tali Cohen Shabtai

***

I planted you, my love, I planted you
 And how come what flowered was not what was planted/and the bearing dod not yet
 give birth
 What was born 

 How come what did not wane could be weakened
 And on the other hand, the trouble is.

 And only into my life they husked this mix
 Of how and why, the slips I saved
 From your eyes.

Sisters

Immortality witness
 For us.
 Stored up in the heart of heaven forever
 What was between
 Us two.

 And refined connection, purified
 Of all harm
 Looks out from the photographs.

 Though our lives are portioned
 To pieces of time,
 Our existence is eternalized between
 The volumes of diaries.

**

The scent of hollow pipe
 Waves slowly through the crowded space of my
 Room.

 And the embroidered candlestick placed
 In its domain
 Smooths over the chill -
 The emptiness

 And everything is so
 Stifled
 So
 Personal
 So chained one
 To another.

To My Father’s Surgeon

I’ve realized how it
 works: It is announced that …
 and it’s known all of a sudden! *

 You know that suddenness has
 an action plan that is comprehensive
 and detailed – it’s
 a strategy within itself.

 When it (the suddenness) receives existence in a person’s
 ears
 it is experienced as a malicious trick indeed it has no
 advance warning or alert before taking
 action.
 Did you know that I had to
 dismantle this trick
 of suddenness

 On the 27th day of January, 2015
 on the 10th floor
 of hearts in question marks
 under full anesthesia
 and full monitoring
           in waiting
 very exact
 for waiting for the
 cardiology ward.

 After all, the obvious suddenness
 is no longer
 understood
 and has many consequences, it is the realization
 that we are winning something that we
 would not necessarily be entitled
 to
             when
 my father is on the operating table
 at a supervised temperature
 at which
 you bypassed the blockage with an
 additional route
 in his heart

 and I could not
 offer you assurances
 at this time
 my father!

 And/
 I was to the Traveler’s Prayer
 and the chorus in the Book of Psalms, from “Blessed is the Man”
 and to
 the verse
 "And all that he does will succeed."

 Did you know
 that I have connected to every special quality
 for any trouble that may
 come
 obsessively?

 And I was for every letter
 of the letters of your name
 in Psalms

 and I searched for any mention in those hours
 of heredity
 Did you know that my father has three
 daughters of wonderful Semitic beauty
 will you recognize my father in them?
 When you operated
 with this suddenness on father.

 And is charity not just a theological term
 for gratitude
 to be
 considered –
 please accept this (from me), surgeon!

 *Heart bypass surgery, decided on within three days of detection!

A Letter to Tali /Tali Cohen Shabtai

There's a whole world
 waiting for you
 around the darker
 corner of life

 in which
 you are adept enough to sort clothes
 of the same
 ethnic group of
 the black cloth
 of your life.

 If you hadn't been a little better
 than the decorations that would add
 figurativeness

 so as to decorate the rhetoric
 of the black cloth of your life

 I promise you that you would
 get
 to see
 a star fall in the dark!

Tali Cohen Shabtai is a poet, she was born in Jerusalem, Israel. She began writing poetry at
the age of six. She has been an excellent student of literature. She began her writings by
publishing her impressions in the school’s newspaper. First of all she published her poetry in a
prestigious literary magazine of Israel ‘Moznayim’ when she was fifteen years old.
Tali has written three poetry books: “Purple Diluted in a Black’s Thick”, (bilingual 2007),
“Protest” (bilingual 2012) and “Nine Years From You” (2018).
Tali’s poems expresses spiritual and physical exile. She is studying her exile and freedom
paradox, her cosmopolitan vision is very obvious in her writings. She lived some years in Oslo
Norway and in the U.S.A. She is very prominent as a poet with a special lyric, “she doesn’t give
herself easily, but subject to her own rules”.
Tali studied at the “David Yellin College of Education” for a bachelor’s degree. She is a member
of the Hebrew Writers Association and the Israeli Writers Association in the state of Israel.
In 2014, Cohen Shabtai also participated in a Norwegian documentary about poets’ lives called
“The Last Bohemian”- “Den Siste Bohemien”,and screened in the cinema in Scandinavia.
By 2020, her fourth book of poetry will be published which will also be published in Norway. Her
literary works have been translated into many languages as well.