DIANA ESKENAZI, from YAVNE, ISRAEL

25 March 2019

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Eleven years ago I wrote 4 poems titled "Poems of Simple Life". When Daphna told me about your project, I told her about my poems and she suggested I should upload them at your site. I hope this will inspire you and expand the notion how simple life is something you appreciate sometimes only after time has elapsed and you view that period from a perspective of age or time. POEMS OF SIMPLE LIFE Diana Eskenazi 2009 Time Travel/ Longing for Simple Life 1 In autumn When evening gently falls Mothers to their children call Come back home A small table Cheese toast dinner Mom wears her pink soft satin "robe de chamber". And we all drink tea with hot milk With two teaspoons of sugar. Light comes in, golden and warm and ripe Lighting the room while the radio plays A longing song in Ladino* *(old Spanish spoken by the Jews exiled from Spain & Portugal in 1500 AD) 2 Noontime. walking in a noisy street Or any time driving home, Suddenly at once transported With the perfume of an autumn night The smell of hot Tea with milk And two Jasmine flowers in a jar. And here they are A little girl of seven And her parents and home And a minute of grace A small family A haven And it is not fifty years that elapsed from that Fleeting moment in time. 3 When evening falls A family sitting in, Ethereal walls Lock the world out. The thorns of existence & Consciousness went elsewhere, for now. A moment of grace When God pities his creatures As if the divine spirit itself spread its wings On the small home In a housing project. 4 My father Wearing blue workers' vest and blue workers' trousers and dusty working shoes Holding in his hand An empty lunch box. He walks tiredly on the pavement His shoes making squeaky sounds. He returns home To a flat in a housing project Two rooms and half a loaf of bread Soft cheese and two children And a wife Waiting for him for dinner On the balcony. It's quiet around, and the world is a flawless dream. 4