Seas and Wind
[End Page 87]I corked up the winds inside me
now I let them fly: Scatter,
my brothers!
Go hither and thither!
Carry me far
to the desolate ends,
to the shores of tempest-torn seas.
I will be a boiling whiteness,
a surging mutiny.Sea, rise up in glory
and take me with you.
Scream and rage;
I will be at your cresting head.
My arms will become huge winged waves [End Page 86]
gripping the ends of the earth.
We'll shake it, make it tremble
until the heavens hear its terror.Arise, riot, tear the rims of the world apart! Storm and spit out a bitter revolt.
Let the earth be shocked to its core, turn back in fear
shuddering in its sins
and consumed in its evil. [End Page 88]
Anne Shanin Kleiman is the first American-born Jewish woman to publish poems in Hebrew. The fourth of seven children born in St. Joseph, Missouri to Russian immigrant parents, she attended a community Hebrew school, where she proved herself an avid and gifted student. At the age of nineteen, Anne came to Chicago to study both at the University of Chicago and the College of Jewish Studies. With Hebrew as the language of instruction, she studied Jewish history, rabbinic thought, Bible, Hebrew language and grammar, and Hebrew literature. She wrote poems in Hebrew, which were published both in the student newspaper and in 1947 as a collection entitled N'tafim (Droplets). Still a resident of Chicago, in December 2006 Anne Kleiman was 97 years old.
Yosefa Raz was born in Be'er Sheva and raised in Jerusalem. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in numerous publications including ZYZZYVA, Tikkun, Moment, and Glimmer Train. Her first collection of poetry, In Exchange for a Homeland, was published in 2004 by Swan Scythe Press. She is currently a student in the Graduate Theological Union-UC Berkeley Joint Doctoral program in Jewish Studies, focusing on literary approaches to the Hebrew Bible.
