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Migrating Birds
translated from the Hebrew by Tsipi Keler

                         for Shaul, my son.

Above the Stella Maris lighthouse
two hundred pelicans in flight.
The air is heavy today, and their flapping sluggish
across the graying sea,
above the green mountain cliffs.
Like an arrowhead pitched north
they join head to tail
forging a blocked secure formation.
All at once their line breaks
their feathers scatter
from the threat of the spinning chopper
descending toward roofs,
urgently, despairingly, seeking
the center of the bright square:
the landing tract of "Ramba`m Hospital" on sea.

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