Mildred Faintley’s translation of Rachel Blaustein’s poem “Rachel,” from the Hebrew, was first published on Nasty Women Writers.
Rachel
The voice you recognize in my songs
is hers, as surely as the blood in my veins
flowed in hers, my far fore-mother,
it flowed in hers, the same.
Any house seems small,
all indoors has the feel of a trap.
I’m never at ease in a city,
never understood the appeal of an address.
What can I say, except that I came
from that same Rachel whose scarf fluttered free
as a nomad’s banner in desert wind?
I always know where I’m going,
don’t need sign or map or even street
to keep to the path that’s mine alone.
My legs remember, my feet repeat:
Rachel!
—as she went then, so now I go.
Mildred Faintley’s translation of Rachel Blaustein’s poem “Rachel,” from the Hebrew, was first published on Nasty Women Writers.
Rachel
The voice you recognize in my songs
is hers, as surely as the blood in my veins
flowed in hers, my far fore-mother,
it flowed in hers, the same.
Any house seems small,
all indoors has the feel of a trap.
I’m never at ease in a city,
never understood the appeal of an address.
What can I say, except that I came
from that same Rachel whose scarf fluttered free
as a nomad’s banner in desert wind?
I always know where I’m going,
don’t need sign or map or even street
to keep to the path that’s mine alone.
My legs remember, my feet repeat:
Rachel!
—as she went then, so now I go.