Hebrew Poems: Timora's Last

I've just posted Timora's last two poems, which she wrote just before her second bone marrow transplant, a bit more than a year before she died. It's hard to believe she wrote them only a week apart, they are so radically different. Although translations of both can be found, each in a different place, on my original blog, I'm reproducing them below, together.

They speak for themselves:

You’ve imprisoned me in a cold dark room
And I can neither stand nor sit
And my lying is uneasy
Hard and restless
And I cry –
Let me out
Or let me stand,
Or rest at least, or take away the cold
And if you can’t,
Please,
Open up a little crack
So I’ll know –
The world still contains a little light.
(November 5, 1999)

And why.
Why live.
Suffer.
Fight, struggle.
Why pull and pull like a wretched, miserable beast –
For what.
In loneliness, in darkness, in the cold.
How much have I asked, and how much will I ask
And I am not the only one
Not only when sorrow blinds the eyes like a veil of tears.
But within me I know
And sometimes, like a flame
The answer blazes before me –
Love.
(November 12, 1999)