This poem feels like a gentle reminder that the sacred often hides inside the simplest objects. These white plastic chairs so ordinary, so unremarkable become places where people pray, reach for one another, and celebrate their children growing up. You can almost feel the warmth of hands gripping the chair legs as women and men lift themselves just high enough to see across a barrier. There is something deeply human in that small act of rising to meet another’s gaze. The mother tossing candies from her chair is a moment of pure tenderness, a gesture of love made possible by something utterly plain. The poem suggests that poetry, like these chairs, doesn’t need grandeur to matter; it needs presence and humility. What moves most is how the chairs quietly disappear when joy needs space to dance. In the end, the poem honours the beauty of the everyday the way ordinary things quietly hold our most intimate moments.
This is so good. I love the mix of the ordinary and the sublime. I never thought of myself as particularly a fan of translated poems--until you started putting them in my inbox on Fridays. You're really good at finding good ones :)
I love this poem. I first read “old rabbis pray” as “old rabbits pray” —sometimes the misreads can present even extra enlightenment, I mean at the Wailing Wall, at that moment, aren’t all beings praying? So beautiful to me.
This poem feels like a gentle reminder that the sacred often hides inside the simplest objects. These white plastic chairs so ordinary, so unremarkable become places where people pray, reach for one another, and celebrate their children growing up. You can almost feel the warmth of hands gripping the chair legs as women and men lift themselves just high enough to see across a barrier. There is something deeply human in that small act of rising to meet another’s gaze. The mother tossing candies from her chair is a moment of pure tenderness, a gesture of love made possible by something utterly plain. The poem suggests that poetry, like these chairs, doesn’t need grandeur to matter; it needs presence and humility. What moves most is how the chairs quietly disappear when joy needs space to dance. In the end, the poem honours the beauty of the everyday the way ordinary things quietly hold our most intimate moments.
This is so good. I love the mix of the ordinary and the sublime. I never thought of myself as particularly a fan of translated poems--until you started putting them in my inbox on Fridays. You're really good at finding good ones :)
I love this poem. I first read “old rabbis pray” as “old rabbits pray” —sometimes the misreads can present even extra enlightenment, I mean at the Wailing Wall, at that moment, aren’t all beings praying? So beautiful to me.
I love your misreading. The more I think about poetry, the more I think about lot of us misread things, and those misreadings add layers.
You read poems like this, and remember why you chose poetry in the first place.