The Valley of Aijalon
I have forgotten precious things:
Wisdom in books, the words of lovers,
But not the shadow on the waters
Cast by a hidden sea-gulls’ wings.
I have forgotten many a pledge
Given and taken—fear and hunger
That once were knives—but not the pewter
Of olives from a mountain’s edge.
The tired brain gathers and lets go
Faces and cities, wars and weathers,
But keeps one sun as still as Joshua’s
On honey-bright unbroken snow.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on September 6, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.
“The Valley of Aijalon” was included in Babette Deutsch’s collection Honey out of the Rock (D. Appleton & Company, 1925). About the poem, Brian Shields, an instructor of English at Middlesex College, writes in his dissertation “The Cultural Broker: Babette Deutsch and Transatlantic Modernism” (2024), “Rather than producing the poetic line that would be considered more syntactically appropriate in Anglophone verse and would introduce a simile while preserving the iambic meter, ‘On unbroken snow as bright as honey,’ Deutsch opts for economic reductions, ‘On honey-bright unbroken snow.’ In the same light, she deviates from the iambic meter in lines that are important to the overall theme and that contain natural elements. [She] draws attention to the significance of preserving a specific and singular image … echoing the concise and focused imagery found in haiku. The thematic focus on the preservation of fleeting moments and vivid natural imagery mirrors the haiku’s emphasis on capturing the essence of a singular moment in time. This approach to image making, deeply rooted in the haiku tradition, demonstrates Deutsch’s ability to bridge Jewish subject matter with Japanese literary practices, highlighting a transnational exchange of cultural and poetic forms.”
Babette Deutsch
Babette Deutsch was born on September 22, 1895, in New York City. A poet, critic, translator, and novelist, she is the author of ten collections of poetry, including The Collected Poems of Babette Deutsch (Doubleday & Co., 1969) and Collected Poems, 1919–1962 (Indiana University Press, 1963). She is also the author of four novels and six volumes of children’s literature, including collections of essays on poetry and poets.