"There is suffering and rage, disappointment and regret in Tuvia Ruebner's late poems written at the threshold of death, but there is also something else, something moving and unexpected-a deep and abiding sense of wonder and amazement. These last poems, excellently translated by Rachel Tzvia Back, face the world with a marvelous feeling of awe." --Edward Hirsch "Rachel Tzvia Back's wise and attentive translations of Tuvia Ruebner's late poems present us with a poet as curious and contemporary in his nineties as in his earlier work. In these poems, death is an approaching horizon, but Ruebner's present carries far more than the memories and ghosts of his past. For Ruebner, the present is time that must not be taken for granted, a deep well from which he draws his dynamic poetry of desire, inquiry, and critique. 'How many nearing ninety still write/ love poems?' he writes in a poem that -filling the page before us- answers its own question." --Adrian X. Jacobs