'ARAMAIC

On a night's drive in an open Jeep
you go past signs on corrugated tin:
Rashaya, Hatzbaya, Kafraya.
As if I sail and travel
beyond times, in a living Aramaic land.
Only the field radio keeps me posted:
an escort, wounded, a chopper landing.
And someone, agitated, beset by horrors,
hurts both my ears:
shrilly, with a trembling sputter,
bungles the Hebrew.'

--Elisha Porat
Translated from the Hebrew by Tsipi Keler.

Killing King Abacus.

Reading runic inscriptions as if Aramaic. (via Brit-Am Now 297)

Ahoy there, thou renowned ostrich.