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Adi Wolfson

Adi Wolfson is an eco-poetry pioneer. In addition to being a poet, he is also an environmental activist, an expert on sustainability, and a professor of chemical engineering. Wolfson has published four poetry books and has won several awards, including Israel's prestigious Levi Eshkol Prize for Literature, in 2017. Wolfson also writes a regular column on environmental issues at YNET and in 2014 was awarded a "Green Globe" by Life and Environment, an umbrella organization that works with more than a hundred Israeli "green" groups.

Dead Sea—Bureaucracy is a project that asks readers to increase global awareness about the increasingly bad conditions of the Dead Sea, and to be a voice for the Sea. "Bureaucracy" is an eco-poem, a poem that speaks for nature and not just about nature, written originally in Hebrew by Adi Wolfson. By sharing, using, translating and reading the poem, you can make a difference and help the planet. Please help us translate the poem into all the languages in the world! To participate in this global project, you can visit Adi Wolfson's Dead Sea—Bureaucracy website or his Facebook page.

Adi Wolfson has also written a compelling new book of poems, I Am Your Father. He explains the book's genesis as follows: "Recently, I have accompanied my daughter on her long and complex journey to find herself. She eventually figured out that she wants to be a boy, and we began the new, challenging path of transgenderism. During this time, I wrote poems as a way of thinking, processing, and speaking with myself. I Am Your Father includes English versions of the poems as translated by the American poet Michael R. Burch. The book is now being published by Finishing Line Press and can be ordered by clicking the hyperlinked book title: I Am Your Father.

"These are compelling poems that speak to our times. I learned a lot that I would never have guessed as I helped translate the poems into English."—Michael R. Burch

Change

Hebrew poem by Adi Wolfson
English translation by Michael R. Burch

I asked her if she loves women.
Maybe, she replied,
and I implored her to love and love
herself too.

She told me that everyone names her
male. I said what is good for them
is also good for me, as long as it is
good for you too.

She said something about change.
She did not expand and I did
not investigate, but we both knew
I will always be his father.

Untitled

Hebrew poem by Adi Wolfson
English translation by Michael R. Burch

In the meantime, I still do not call him
come
but I already write to him
come.
Come to me
I am Home.

My son

Hebrew poem by Adi Wolfson
English translation by Michael R. Burch
 
When you were born
I wept
pure happiness
without any trace
of anger for
the pain that
would flood my eyes
and yours
even though I already
knew it then
as only father
knows.
 
And I did not
tell you
until this moment
when my
heart is crushed
to yours
and the unbearable truth
stands between us
so that I cannot stop
the tears
 
And once again
I am
crying.

Thanks

Hebrew poem by Adi Wolfson
English translation by Michael R. Burch

In the middle of life he gave me
the opportunity to ask, again,
who am I. To struggle with the body,
to explore the soul's Hades
then rise step-by-step
to daily life.
 
He gave me courage anew,
not to judge people. To see
the other. To be different.
Not to concede myself
or him. To view the world
properly and continue on the way.
 
He taught me that the obvious
is not self-evident and he
said we have to live the truth
here and now. And he has not
forgotten to leave me also a place
to love myself.

Bureaucracy

Hebrew poem by Adi Wolfson
English translation by Michael R. Burch

The "Dead Sea" is drying along the accepted channels
someone dammed the River Jordan's mouth
then tied the streams' joints
and filled the factories' pools
and even the sun,
naturally,
is shaving the face of the water.

A few years from now, or perhaps longer,
many salt pillars will
stand in our place,
mute reminders that for the sins of Sodom and the crimes
of Jerusalem's clerks there will be no answer.

All English rights reserved to Adi Wolfson and Michael R. Burch

To date, "Bureaucracy" has been written in or translated into the following languages:

Hebrew, by Adi Wolfson
English, by Adi Wolfson and Michael R. Burch
Arabic, by Marzuq Al-Halabi
French, by Charlette Franco
German, by Antje Eiger
Spanish, by Gerardo Lewin

The HyperTexts