On October 16, 1995 I found myself unexplainably writing poetry. This continued quite intensively until the 28 of May 1977, and then stopped as suddenly as it started.
Several things seemed very strange to me and made little sense. Not only am I bilingual, but by that time I spent quite a few years living in the US and speaking English. Yet the poems insisted on coming out in Hebrew. Any attempt to write in English was unsatisfying and blatantly poor. As composer I was used to spend several month creating a new work while carefully editing and rewriting sections. Yet the average poem was captured in under two minutes, and no matter how many hours I spent trying to edit, correct, or improve it, I could add nothing of significance. So I gave up trying. And finally, I was astounded when images and figures from the old biblical Israel begun to show up in my poems; and worse, they did so while totally ignoring my strong resentment and bewilderment. So I just accepted that.
During this period I wrote three books of poetry, in a Trilogy I named Gift of Life. Book I can be loosely translated as Murmurs of Death and Birth. Book II is titled On the Death Bed. Book III is called East of Crotonia, where Crotonia is a play on where I live: Croton on Hudson, but possibly also a reference to Croatia. And then I added a couple of new books: In Cycles of the Laughter and the Crying followed by Somewhere Between a Train and Love, that include the Book of Dan a shorter Book of Ruth, and some small fragments I called From his Personal Diary.
I think that today I understand why I wrote in Hebrew. Hebrew is an extraordinary language where it is common to create a new word out of several exiting words -- and everyone understands. It is also a language where you can pack into a single word what in English may require several words. But I think that for me, especially with my strong musical background as composer, I tended to use the language for its unique musical and sonic qualities. Possibly this is why I found it almost impossible to translate: one can replace Hebrew words with English words, but that entirely looses the musical elements that were so tightly connected to my Hebrew words and their meaning.
So as homage to Mendelssohn that wrote his famous Songs without Words for solo piano, I named these Words without Song. Curiously, I also gave myself a pseudo name that today strikes me as odd: David Eshhal. I get the David as people often mistook my name with David, and besides, David himself did sneak into some of my poems. I'm a little startled by Eshhal -- I'm pretty sure nobody else has that name. In Hebrew it is composed of two words: Esh, and Ha-El. Which mean Fire, and of God.
Feel free to contact me if you would like a PDF of the poems.