Pride -- Dahlia Ravikovitch

[Translated 1989 by Chana Bloch and Ariel Bloch]
[1936–2005, Israeli]

Even rocks break, I tell you,
and not from old age.
For years they lie on their backs
in the heat and the cold,
so many years
it almost seems peaceful.
They don’t move from their place
and so the cracks are hidden.
A kind of pride.
Year after year passes over them
expectant, waiting.
The one who will shatter them later
has not yet come.
And so the moss grows,
the seaweeds are tossed about,
the sea pounces in, and returns.
And they, it seems, do not move.
Until a little seal comes
to rub against the rocks,
comes and goes away.
And suddenly the stone is wounded.
I told you, when rocks break
it comes as a surprise.
And all the more with people.

Source: Ravikovitch, D 1970, The Third Book, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, Tel Aviv.