the hyperreal itself

Is this the time, this generation, when simulation overtakes everything, when, as in the Borges fable, the map supersedes the empire? Zelda's poetry, often spiritual, asks questions of the will that moves these stars, points of light projected on the dome of a planetarium. No matter how we may try to become used to it, this new reality is strange, and amid the torpor of our will the precession of simulacra continues.

A DRUNK, EMBROILED WILL

A drunk, embroiled, bleeding will
that imposed itself on constellations,
on the world's secret,
is blazing in my generation's heart.
Fettering the free, festive air,
with a strict hand.
The sun and the deeps are wheel horses
on its farm.

It is strange to be a woman,
simple, domestic, feeble,
in an insolent, violent generation,
to be shy, weary,
in a cold generation, a generation of wheelers and dealers,
for whom Orion, Pleiades, and moon
are advertisement lights, golden marks, army badges.
To march in a shaded street
reflecting, slowly, slowly,
to taste China
in a perfumed peach,
to look at Paris
in a cold movie theater,
while they fly
around the world,
while they fly in space.
To be among conquerors
and conquered,
while every creature is ashamed, afraid,
alone.

It is strange to wither before clouds of enmity,
while the heart is drawn
to a myriad of worlds.

           — Zelda Mishkovsky, translated from the Hebrew by Marcia Falk