POEM: "All" by Agi Mishol

Life that swirls in the scraps of swallows in the early evening,
reaching out red from within the flower,
sprawling lazily along the entire length of the cat,
barking and then listening for a moment to itself within the dog,
fluttering in the gecko's transparent belly,
hiding behind the appearance of separate forms
moving inside the wheat or frozen in a trampled badger's body
on one side of the road
all, all of this -
life that defines itself and deconstructs in philosophers' minds
twisting in the bodies of spring vipers
or whispered by a cold carp,
its mystery glistening in the geometry of spider webs,
endlessly gushing, green, from the earth
or wandering restless in the bodies of storks
all -
rustling in thickets,
strangling the lovely homes with clutching ivy,
steaming through the window from the pots of barley soup,
dispersed in the semen scent of flowering carob
rising in bellies and in poems the length of a cigarette,
Life that exhales now between the ribs
in the heart's harmonica
all of this --
inside you -- blood and bone
inside me
now.

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