We had 30 seconds to charge at the nipple,
It was a hill
towering at the end of the obstacle track of the basic training camp.
The sky’s collar was ironed above it with clouds’ starch
and its sands’ khaki was in another setting, a line in a nature poem.
But where is poem and where is nature,
when two canteens swayed on hip,
Uzi at hand
and a shovel along the spine.
What was left was to stuff with fantasies
the regimental secretary’s nipples that always sprawled
in the commander’s jeep
and to recall the painter Gaugin that agonized over eating the hen
that he had or painting it.
There, in front of the hill, we were very hungry.


From the Hebrew: Hanni Dimitstein