Poetry by Yuval Gilad

“The Laboratory”
             By Yuval Gilad

Science, lonely as the God
drooling over eternal life,
infects monkeys with cancer.

Death can be a greater gift than life
when you are a monkey
under a sick red light.

The saddest eyes in the universe
watch scientists in white coats.

Even if the laboratory monkeys
will live for thousands of years
they will not understand Evil.

A monkey cannot sleep,
longing for the sky,
wounds his hand just to feel
that he did something by himself,
besides his bodily needs.

There is no night and day in a laboratory
permanently lit like hell.

- Yuval Gilad is an Israeli poet, born in 1971. Published five chapbooks in Hebrew, and several English translations in magazines.

Copyright©2026 by Yuval Gilad. All Rights Reserved.