שיר כאב [Shir Ke'ev] [English translation]

Pain song, comes and goes

What luck, I'm singing now

Pain song, again and again

So I sing now, maybe it helps.

She got her a young educated Arab

Actually one that I knew

I even saw how it started

One night I got drunk

I felt how it creeps under my legs

And how it eats me till the edge of the toenails.

Well I can't surround a woman 365 degrees

She always has a crack, through it she can suddenly be exposed to a passer by that comes and gets all she wants to give.

She just grabs to herself one more trembling moment.

Pain song...

A young educated Arab, till the edge of the toenails.

A young Arab that looks straight in the eyes

A teacher in some village in the 'Triangle'

A participant in mixed amateur theatre of our mixed-up local municipality.

She and I are going out for sometime now actually.

What's politics got to do with her?

She is still a sucker.

She's crazy about theatre, she's just not one of those,

But if there's some course around, so why not, even with those.

Pain comes and goes

What luck, I'm singing now

Pain, again and again

Maybe it helps.

She used to go to a meeting once a week

And come back with some regards quite regularly

With some breathing, with some blush on her cheek

Her lively glance was stabbing me to crying.

She invited me to the trimester party.

They performed connection exercises.

In the the movement to touch, he made her a string,

she answered him a bow.

It was really a nice exercise, drew clapping.

A young Arab that I knew - looking in the eyes.

Pain comes and goes...

After the party he invited me and her to his balcony

We drank coffee, we drank cognac, his mother from time to time entering.

He spoke about theatre as a possibility for a bridge

"It's possible to reach a understanding" she approaches him excited.

I was looking here, I was looking there, I was stupiding everywhwere.

Anywhere I crawled, his two eyes I encountered.

I don't know what he actually wanted to express

I just kept on drowning myself in cognac.

Pain comes and goes...

Somewhere out there barked dogs to the moon.

We're going, I said, it's late

Wait, he said, what are you running from?

Maybe you'll stay for the night, he suggested provocatively.

You're indeed so drunk.

I told him: we'll get there.

Get where? he said, looking in my eyes.

I returned a look, blurting: Jerusalem.

It took him some time to bring a smile. He didn't even move a eye.

Later he talked to me, straight into the wine,

"At the end of every sentence that you say in Hebrew, sits an Arab with a Nargila, even if it starts in Sibiria, or in Hollywood with Hava Nagila."

I said to him in Yiddish: she's judging between us.

In the bubble of her silence, our eyes met again.

Pain song comes and goes...

• Artist:Meir Ariel