The path darkens. A fractured moon
Hung between pines to the right.
Breath blew with the chill of coniferous darkness,
Among the dew-dusted grass.

Our steps friendly and thoughts aimless;
Between us—no words or desires.
The plain flowers of wayside ditches
Don’t hide their vows within.

We don’t know why on this June evening
We are together on a distant path,
What does each of us take, in parting:
Oblivion—hope—dismay?

Not wanting to know and not wanting to think . . .
How tenderly a chill falls.
The heart believes so in impetuous freedom
So it knows: all will be, as it must.

Benjamin Arenstein is a PhD student at the University of Chicago studying Hebrew and Russian literature. His research focuses on modes of writing and literary production among Jewish authors in the late Soviet Union.

 

Reproduced from Minuty (Minutes).

Elisheva Bikhovski was born in 1888 in the city of Ryazan, southeast of Moscow. She began her writing career in Russian, publishing her first poetry collection, Minuty (Minutes), in 1919. Although she was raised in a Russian Orthodox household, Bikhovski became a dedicated student of Hebrew and moved to Palestine in 1925 with her husband Simeon Bikhovski. There she transitioned away from writing in Russian and became an active participant in the burgeoning Hebrew literary scene. Bikhovski is best known for her Hebrew works Kos Ketanah (Small Cup) and Simta’ot (Alleys) as well as her critical study of the Russian poet Alexandr Blok. She died in 1949 in Tiberias.