Admiel Kosman (b. 1957)

Several poems from Admiel Kosman, born in Haifa in 1957, are available — in Hebrew, Hebrew transliterated into Roman alphabet, and English.
at Soul and Gone.

Admiel Kosman is professor of Talmud and rabbinic literature at the School for Jewish Theology at the University of Potsdam and a prolific poet in Hebrew. His first book of poetry translated into English was published in 2011 and is available in a bilingual edition. His blog (apparently stagnant at present), is available in English and Hebrew. See also bio at Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature.

Here’s an excerpt from Poetry International’s description‘s of his work:

The speakers in his poems do not recognise the emotional separation wall from the Other and sometimes converge, or acknowledge difference and feel the Other’s pain: one speaker is a biblical Jew and at the same time a Palestinian worker, both in love and barred from the spiritual and physical Jerusalem; in another poem, a Jew talks to God in a ‘foreign’ language, i.e. not in Hebrew, unconcerned that he may be classified (and crucified) as Christian; in yet another, a Jew searches for a sleeping God in four Moslem cities, two of which are at the same time (as they really are) also Jewish holy cities: “Mecca or Medina. / Jerusalem or Hebron.” But Kosman’s focus is not only local. His range is broad: a childhood wound, hidden in the middle of a boast about the ability to make verse out of any material; the influence of English and computers on language; love poems; and poems of ars poetica.

Piyyut, Mashiv HaRuach

Kosman’s “Piyyut for Mussaf of Rosh Hashana” appears in Machzor Lev Shalem (Rabbinical Assembly 2010) in Hebrew and translation by Aubrey L Glazer.

A musical version — composed and sung by Atalya Lavi — was released in 2016. Lyrics are in Hebrew, but the Shevarim page includes Glazer’s translation as well as the full Hebrew.

וְאֵיךְ אַתָּה מַבִּיט מִלְּמַעְלָה? פּוֹתֵחַ עוֹד שָׁנָה
וְאֵיךְ אַתָּה סֻפַּר אוֹתָנוּ, כְּמוֹ כְּבָשִׂים פועים,
קְרֵבִים אֵלַיִךְ, לַבַּמֶּה? [sorry — question marks don’t cut and paste well]
And just how are you looking down from on high?
beginning another year?
and just how do you take account of us, as bleating sheep, approaching you, on the platform?