Poetry from Gad Kaynar-Kissinger

Photo by runnyrem

What’s Left

Poetry is a safe
In a foreign city
Hotel.

A tour guide
Trying to get lost.

Salted peanuts
In the bar after midnight.
A second after they closed.
A second before blacking out.

Poetry is what’s left
After you have left
And took the elevator.
And walked side by side down the hallway.
You went inside your room.
And didn’t lock the door.
She went inside hers
And did.

Poetry is what’s left.

— Translated by Natalie Feinstein

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Gad Kaynar-Kissinger (70) is a retired Associate Professor from the Theater Department at Tel Aviv University. His poetry was published in major Israeli literary periodicals and supplements, and compiled in seven books, including a bi-lingual Hebrew-Spanish publication Lo que queda (What Remains). For ADHD he won “The General Israeli Writers’ Union” Award (2010). Kaynar is a stage, TV and film actor, and translator of 70 plays from English, German, Norwegian and Swedish. For his Ibsen translations he was designated in 2009 by the Norwegian King as “Knight First Class of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit.”