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Chana Bloch

Chana Bloch

Chana Bloch's Swimming in the Rain: New and Selected Poems, 1980-2015 includes selections from The Secrets of the Tribe, The Past Keeps Changing, Mrs. Dumpty, and Blood Honey as well as new work. Bloch is co-translator of the Song of Songs and Israeli poets Yahuda Amichai and Dahlia Ravikovitch. She has two Pushcart Prizes, two NEA fellowships, the Felix Pollak Prize, the Poetry Society of America's Di Castagnola Award, and the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. Bloch is Professor Emerita of English at Mills College, where she directed the Creeative Writing Program. 

Three Wishes

The first is always foolish, the second                 
a foolish attempt to undo it.  
Those two are wasted

on the young, who are famous
for wasting—
oh, it was you

who made those wishes,
you and your regrettable failure           
to see around corners.     
     
You've lived on roots, slept on straw,
looked down a well so deep       
you couldn't see the bottom.                 

That's no cloth of gold,
just the setting sun                         
gilding the windows.                                     

What are you saving that third wish for?

The day the horizon               
begins to tighten its wire                       
around you?

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