From Out of the Burning Bush Migdal Eden [0]

You’re Going You’re going. You don’t want to be here. Born just before the Peace in the Galil War… the war that lasted such a long time… You can’t imagine calling a war Peace in the Galil. (No, neither can I) So a new time and …you’re going. The photos that I took of you at other ages, on your bedroom door, still there. But you’re going, before your 18th birthday. You’ve been stubborn and clear for a long time… with friends both Jewish and Arab. You’ve been a questioner longer than most. And… you’ve caused pain too, until I learned to say no to your strongly stated loyalties and directions. But at least… you were looking. You dared to do something about the iron fist of all the things that happened. ….. You chose. I’ll never see you in uniform, a blue and white flag… waving from the top of the tank… you’re commanding.

[1]

This is one photo… I’ll never have of you.

[2]

[3]

[4]

A Landscape from God’s Viewpoint Seen from this viewpoint… You and I are but a field of poppies in the Galil… blooming gaily but briefly, our petals ready to fly away in the wind… “It is so quiet here at the source of The Still Small Voice…” Make me forget from yesterday, the sound of sirens… and make me see and feel, and look upon… and bless... the age-old terraced hills… the treeless Judean Hills… the treeless Golan Heights… the treeless Galilean Hills… Remind me to put my head to the created earth (ha adama) into a quieter landscape… so that I too may look upon all that was created and say in deep satisfaction…. “And it was good.”

[5]

Spring Blossoms amongst Thyme and Rosemary The delicate blossoms on the apple trees of (The Land) … will be on the trees for a few days… two... or three… at most. Our spring days must be caught and held… … kissed quickly. “Kiss me now!” cry the blossoms…“for tomorrow I’ll be gone.” And if you are not of these...these spring blossoms… then you are of the thyme and the rosemary… their woody stems… trodden underfoot… scenting the air... more than the blossoms… You are long-lived... and… useful… stuffed into mattresses and scented pillows… and into your beloved’s dreams… or put into the cooking vessel tomorrow… to season the Passover lamb… the blossoms flown …the blood over the door.

[6]

From Inside a Cistern (Cool………..curved……….dense) the four hundred lives of the monks …condensed on the white walls marking unseen spiritual growth ringsthe years and century past (passed) by the monks in the church/monastery of Saint John’s in Ein Keremhuge and echoing with souls. (This empty cistern) shown by the one lone monk now residing in the church-tending to tourists nowto me- the Jewish worshipper of cisterns. This cistern (filled full with clear in-gathered rain water) dripping down off the palms would have given water to the thirstyduring a drought or under siegefor many months on end…………. I am awed….. By this vast void, by (this vast hidden underground reservoir…) hidden underneath the church and its vaulted painted ceilings; painted with saints looking off into space; talking to no one-vast golden icons and scented incense, guarding gilded heavens…

[7]

The Road Descending to Ein Kerem

On Bus Number 17 Beside you is an ancient Yemenite who you’ve known for an ancient long time…at least a hundred yearsminus his goats and his secret herbs, that gives him magic strength. He is sitting next to the doctor from Hadassah..who was born and grew up in Brooklyn. The doctor’s on his way home after a double shift, too tired to even wonder why? he made aliyah (rising up)rising up to live a life of double shifts and riding buses, in order to… pay for his kid’s shoes. The Yemenite’s on his way to the last bus stop, …to the turnaround, that sits across from his small synagogue, and the local makolet. That’s where you know him from…for the hundred years. He’s always sitting at that bus stop-…with his two friends.

[8]

Henneni(Here I am)

[9]

The Honey and the Sting Bound Together in the Carcass of the Lion We camp out in the wadi, laying our sleeping bags out on the sand of the dry riverbed. When my bleeding starts, I strip off my clothes, bathing my limbs in the moonlight. Tonight, under sister moon’s influence I will not plug the blood. I squat calm, watching the blood flow into the ground. But it makes him ask anxious questions…like a little boy who’s never seen blood before. Aren’t you bleeding too much? He asks. His questions scare him, diminish his power. Calm in the moonlight, with sister moon’s glowing eyes, I see in him Samson’s heir, with all of his powers and blindness’. Looking at him thus I can feel his long hair brushing my inner thighs. And I know myself, my allure, my womanly scent that causes him to fall at my feet, blood or no blood, wanting relations with me. Sister moon’s eyes hold the image of what he will do in remembrance of me or in grief.

[10]

After the Sharav (Desert Wind)

The First Rains… The first drops, and there is a sizzling sound, accompanied by the smell of sulfur, as the rain falls onto the dusty limestone: Jerusalem stone, Jerusalem lintels; the keystones in arches, suddenly delineated, illuminated, by those first crisp drops… and suddenly everything is alertthe gazelle standing, by the dried up stream bed in the rocksthe sukkah, with the holes in the roof, to let the first few drops inmyself, standing poised under a domed ceilingwatching, watching, as the rains begin to take on formto flow, to stream into the open mouth…of our desert thirst.

[11]

The Flash Flood The wadi hangs between the jagged peaks Of the Sinai, deep and deeply redthe color of the blood of the earth The wadi hangs hollow and suspended waiting for a message from the Heavens. This is about to come roaring through mountain passages… in a flash flood which will wash away a bus and the 36 German tourists. Rut and Mohammed, in a panic run out of their small house on the beach. Clutching their small son by one arm, they make a mad scramble to the top of the closest telephone pole. In the morning they are found, still clinging to the pole, still gripping their son by one arm. Their clothes have been removed, entirely ripped off and away by the raging waters.

[12]

A Sunset Spent with Pharaoh Ein Fasha I prize the cap off of a bottle of Gold star beer by holding its rim against a pointed rock, while tapping it sharply on the top… The empty bottle, falling, rolls down the mountain without breaking

[13]

The cry of the hawk flows through the spaces of the bare hills. The sun sinking lower streams in light golden rays giving up its last light. Down below me the hawk wheels hanging in the air flut it’s wings suddenly

tering.

On the beach; this side of the Jordanian border the sand under the wheels of the jeep turns cold… as the evening wind catches hold, the air spare with smells…rich in spare-ness

[14]

Negev Sunset the call to prayer echoes along with the smell of strong coffee Arabic and filtered light throughamong the flat roofed houses staggered on the dry bare hills. The boys walk down the streets holding hands. The Bedouin boy passing by with his flock flickers on and off the screen of a sun silhouetted hill. drr… drr… drr... his guttural call lifts to the sky, pulling his flock on.

[15]

For a Long Time I’ve had Trouble For a long time, I’ve had trouble with the prayer that says… He (God) will bring peace upon us. He will erect a Tent of Peace… Over us (around us) I simply don’t believe it. I wish I did.

[16]

Jerusalem is Also [17]

[18]

[19]

I come into the city through a tunnel. I am armed with a rifle, a pistol, and a hand grenade. The walls of the tunnel run red with blood. I notice the walls of the tunnel becoming smaller. The opening at the end of the tunnel …is closing. I run to get into the city before it closes… My child also went into the city through a tunnel. but his tunnel was white and filled with translucent light. His tunnel billowed and grew, as he ran lightly. His heart filled with gladness, on his way into the city. My friend comes into the city through a tunnel, a soft red tunnel, with pulsating walls that give to the touch, the walls a deep rich red…

[20]

Going Up to Jerusalem… Growing on hills, on hills…surrounding Jerusalem mustard plants… that feed the starving during the siege of the city Growing on hills, on hillsthe mushrooming David-s who would be saviors, nailing themselves up on gaily decorated booths; Jerusalem known as the city of the Messiah Complex.

Growing on hills, on hills-Jerusalem a quilt to the eyeembroidered with the Knesset and Qumran lid; Old City and NewA City of Stone… Jerusalem rears itself up out of the hills… shimmering and straining at all belief.

[21]

Jerusalem is also an Obsession Everyone comes to Jerusalem expecting to see Jesus Christ… come strolling out… from the Worker’s Bank on Ben Yehuda Street. Ivan Schweibel…made his reputation painting pictures of David ha Melech… doing that very thing. Ivan lives in Ein Kerem But… he comes from New York. Is that why Jerusalem is an obsession to him? Tourists, new immigrants land at Ben Gurian Airport, with the same obsessions, the same questions. Is it going to rain in April? (It’s not the rainy season) Will I find God in Jerusalem? I’m thinking (Even the dead ones want to come here and die again)

[22]

More Obsession with the City of David Riding through Jerusalem the “Holy City” wouldn’t it be a relief to feel yourself in some “foreign city” Prague maybe or even Chicago? What is it about Jerusalem that gives birth to Crusades, gets it razed and plowed under by salt, and gives new meaning to the word Waco? How many more David-s are volunteering to go crazy in the City of David? streaking out from the tomb of the Worker’s Bank on Ben Yehuda Street going on to found a community that poisons its children?

[23]

Eating on the Terrace of the Cinematheque… when…The Old City is Closed After the Riots The stage (I mean) the tables are seton the outdoor terrace of the Cinemathequewith its excellent (front row) view of the Old City walls... set with Michelangelo beauty (the Mona Lisa smile) into its setting clasp, on the Hill of Evil Council… Smoking alabaster pillars of resonance-of yesterdays tear gas cloudslift lazily in the non-wind over the Old Cityas it seemingly coils, curls, and sleeps- its nose tucked in its tail/ turned into its butt. After yesterday’s riots/clad in scarlet and black (blood and knives concealed in her black robes -and behind her veil) and the protective seducing smile… Today, the veil rent, the sky torn-the guard on alert, buzzing helicopters low overhead. What drove me to eat here, half reclining in the hatred that I feel in the sun shielded glare from over there? only a steep wadi suicide jump away-only the non-perspective medieval tapestryjump away All of us… them-we-“us”…… could easily suicide bomb this wadibetween us… (or) If we set out one by one, walking a thin wire stretched over the wadi that lies uneasily between the Old City… and the New, as that French wirewalker did one year for a Jerusalem Festival featin silver sequins proclaiming it an act of worship-knowing that we’re not going anywhere-except to kill and to die -like mosquito’s dive bombing a bug zapper

[24]

Holocaust Medley

[25]

Flames The Children’s Memorial at Har Herzl The children. The children are a million flames…reflected in an endless mirrored hall. Their names and ages, when they died …whispered out on the cold surfaces of the mirrors… Shmule, age two, Prague, 1939 Rachel, age five, Krakow, 1941 Hannah, age four, Warsaw, 1943 Aaron, age five, Seidlitz, Gubernia 1942 David, age nine Thereisenstadt 1943 Yitka, age eight, Thereisenstadt Rifka, age seven, Warsaw Marcelle, age six, Hochberg …The children are a million flames.

[26]

The Strings of David’s Harp The golden strings come unstrunggiving up a psalm each, one by onenot written in stone, carved, chiseled, thrown down in anger, brokenwhen the people don’t respond, don’t even look. The golden strings falling-one by oneneeding to be re-sung, remembered, re-prayed…David, smiling gently, singingas one of the golden strings of his harp, is used to wrap up/ is wound around a package of meat (kosher or non-kosher?) purchased from Kessler Bros… -sings around the paper wrapped piece of meat; a nothing special, mundane weekday piece of meat, purchased unthinking, on a Monday.

[27]

David’s harp strings come unstrungsing a psalm, a prayerone and one, as the body of the baby from the ghetto of Warsaw, who starved to death in 1943in the ghettono tallit, no ten commandments revealed; not a single onethe body of the child, the only meat left in the ghetto, with its bones (Kosher or non-kosher?) wrapped round with butcher’s paper from Kessler Bros. (plain, rough paper)no tallit, but tied and remembered, and prayed by, wound by a golden string of David’s harp. David smiling gently, singing a lullabyrocking the dead starved child sweetsung for an eternity.

[28]

The red headed girl’s Bat Mitzvah

Bubbe, also a Rabbi, sits in the congregation …among the celebrants. He has come from America, to see his Israeli granddaughter ...celebrate her Bat Mitzvah. Bubbe caught in a picture, forever proud, …senses all alive in generational connection. Levi has changed out of shorts into more Rabbinical garb, to officiate at the red headed girl’s Bat Mitzvah… dropped is the sandaled foot from off the edge of his desk. ……A flock of redheads are lined up… in order of height………… ………. behind the bema… … in front of the ark……looking like …a set of polished copper organ pipes… shiny as new coins, ready to blow their whistles: a cluster of red headed bells… ……..arranged in ringing tone.

[29]

From behind the black and white stripes of Levi’s turned back, I see the smallest red headed boy’s eyes… turned …onto Levi’s in a big closed mouthed smile. His red headed sister beside him is more serene… arms folded, her left hand gripping her right wrist… In embracing calm celebration… what you see are her eyes looking out from Theresienstadt’s locked and artfully placed windows and gates, that said in so many carefully painted scenesset up for the eyes of Red Cross observers“See how we cherish these Jewish children! ..See, they are in good hands! Don’t you see that I am treating them like I am their auntie!.....................” ……What you see are her eyes… looking out from Theresienstadtbut a calm, serene, and safe Theresienstadt. She’s writing a poem about the first butterfly…… not the last. The Altar cloth runs along in golden approval as the young red headed girl begins her chanting …………..and her passage into womanhood

[30]

( Recovered from a hidden cache in Theresienstadt ) The Butterfly Butterfly (Pavel…….) The Butterfly He was the last. Truly the last. Such yellowness was bitter and blinding Like the sun’s tear shattered on stone. Pavel That was his true colour. And how easily he climbed, and how high. Certainly, climbing, he wanted to kiss the last of my world. I have been here for Seven weeks, ‘Ghettoized’. Who loved me have found me, Daisies call to me, And the branches also of the white chestnut in the yard. But I haven’t seen a butterfly here. The last one was the last one. [31]

(Pavel)

Pavel

There are no butterflies, here in the ghetto.

Pavel

Pavel Pavel Pavel Pavel Pavel Pavel

Pavel

Pavel

Pavel.........

Theresienstadt 1942

[32]

Out of the Burning Bush

There wasn’t much hope, was there? Of coming back alive. The song said that, The Savior isn’t coming home. He isn’t even going to call. The first sight of you, swinging down the hall, on duty at Sha’re EtZedek hospital… made me want to close you inside of a closed fist; protectively, maybe just to take you… But you had your own defenses. You’ve slipped through my fingers. By being an Israeli, stubborn to survive, was that the undoing? The fate? In uniform, an Uzi slung over your shoulder, our eyes not meeting, you left. We never really talked about the fear….

[33]

You were called to reserve duty only for a week this time, but I have missed you. Listening for your footsteps, I have grown ears, larger than an African elephant. When are you coming home? We listen….

I didn’t hear them, any of them, when they said that they were sorry… that you were a good soldier. Were you a good soldier? that you had made your choice. Had you made your choice? that you did what had to be done. Did you do what had to be done? Yes, but that doesn’t change anything…….. I saw through you, as you tried to tell me. Shrugging your shoulders, You said, “That’s life”

Empty sheets is not life.

[34]

Shrugging your shoulders, you said, “That’s life.” …A dream. The quality of the symbol and the meaning that it engenders. I keep having this dream, where I must lift your body and put it into the grave myself. I cannot stand this dream. So I dream backwards. “Look into my eyes! Stand up!” I run- to reach out, to balance, to hold you as you’re falling- but in your eyes – I can see life draining away, I can see-nothing. Then I wake myself up, shaking, Your eyes……………………………………. no longer

[35]

I Crawl into the Grave

His voice. “She lay down on the grave with me. She still tried to kiss me. I tried to tell her, “That’s life. I cannot put my arms around you, with no voice to speak.”

[36]

Echoes of War

Echoes

[37]

Echoes of the Gulf War Visiting here in America, the fire siren echoes the air raid siren; the gas mask to put on, the radio and television endlessly stuttering out that music and… an echoed scene. The curfew is off… I am...at the building site in Talpiot… along with three Arab workers from the territories who didn’t get a distribution of gas masks. They are up dancing on their roves, cheering, when they’re at home in the village Without gas masks on, as the scuds fall on Tel Aviv. When the air raid sirens go off now, They know that I have a gas mask with me. “No, I tell them. There’s one gas mask, and four of us. No one is going to put it on. If it’s dropped, you will see the nerve gas rolling in a low white cloud towards us… if we’re going to die.”

[38]

Echoes Overhead The only sound to be heard… flying high overhead over the cloud cover… not to be seen Dani and the other reserve pilots called out of their offices to fly over our heads… to protect us. There is not another sound to be heard. It is the middle of the day. We are under curfew. We can do nothing to save ourselves except eat ourselves… the sound of the planes over the clouds spinning in our heads.

[39]

My son writes a funny essay for school about what it’s like to huddle on the bathroom floor trying to get a gas mask on that’s not adjusted rightthat we look like frogs to each other through our fogged, blurry face plates. He doesn’t write about getting scared when I finally refuse to put the gas mask on anymore… The bombing is on some sort of schedule. Much later I read that this is because...the Americans prevent many bombs from being launched. But at the time it seems that the enemyhas put the bombing on a tea time schedule.

When the air raid sirens go off, off schedule, we are stuck en route on the bus staring out the glass of the bus windows up at the sky, cursing, laughing because Mad Saddam has sent us a curve ball scud.

[40]

Silences of the living

Silences of the living And the dead

A Ton of Silent Spacing

[41]

Our relatingthrashes wildly, suddenly released – into the open space beneath the throbbing helicopter. Our unit – called out in a state of emergency- Code 8 during this dream; where I can see you againin uniformdying in front of my eyesagain and again. Our relating…. never over in the spacing …. between the carved letters on the stone…. over your grave, in the spacing …. between…. the words… written down… in the spacing between…the nights…and… the day

And……….You are……………. (not there) [42]

Choosing my War I didn’t choose any of the wars Especially not the one that I lived through (so, they tell me) and choose to call mine What I did choose – was to fight rather than go down without a struggle. I’m hard to catch, harder to kill but you weren’t, and now in frozen scenes- in frozen painI see you still, taking too long to dieas your gut explodedexpanding the dust with your blood. To un-feel…. a gift bottle of red wine, spilling like your blood onto the white table cloth, etches the details of your dying, until indelibly fixed, the stain on the table cloth-is stamped like a visa. Even as I pass out, feelings run like agile rats, along the ropes of my veins and arteries, biting me, chewing at the anchor of my denying numbness… [43]

The Night before Battle

Kobi, quietly, with intensity, tensely cleans his gun. Uri leans against his jeepnonchalantly, as Eyal rolls up in his sleeping bag, ignoring everything … too tired to care much… …on the eve of… another battle.

[44]

Dealing with Illusions and Jokers I wear a veil, a mirage…writing some sort of account…as we sit around the campfire in the wadi, playing strip poker at high midnight. It’s cold enough to make it a challenge… removing any small piece of uniform herein the red jagged freeze. In the morning, we’ll hike under the burning, fiery prow of the Sinai sun… on our way to Santa Katarina. What will we find there? Will we find the ark there, a splinter from the unknowable? Will we find stone tablets? the Ten Commandments? once again commanded? …or only fragments of broken commandments, scurrying around like roaches… in search of a nest? More likely we’ll find a hidden sniper’s hatch, a sniper’s venomous fanged shots, shooting at us from some blind hole, shots aimed at us as we re-cross the barren curse of the Wilderness /as, in quest, we march re-conquering and being relieved of the same bloody sand-over and over again. (Only if only to reach the canal) [45]

…in time to re-part the Red Sea… to re-take for the 10th time… something that on account of an oath/ on account of a vow that was made… (and MAYBE there is no other choice.) But from tiredness, in sore eyes, and lack of sleep, who can remember when or why we are at war once more… Can we repeat a miracle? And live? fighting for our freedom, or dying, be forgotten……. I sit wearing a mirage- re-creating with words and my wounds- a warthat will be remembered vividly, in nightmares, (and only by my companions.) (I AM CREATED) -an image or mirage in the desert by a people whom from our dealings, force our unplanned un-wishedfor forays into the desert via arid, tense- dry un-named wadis-battlefields (that will be erased in the next sand storm)-by the next flash flood)

[46]

A Tone on a Bone from a Stone With no proofing to create protective cross hatching insulationHe fell at once, and whoever was standing close enough …heard a loud crackas his skull shattered under the force of – the blow from the stone… Does a stone have a man’s name on it like a bullet? fragmenting into a thousand pieces of pain, like a bomb filled with nails and shrapnel, designed to shatter the …youngest human souls within range… And is that praying or fierce exultation, that exhalation, …… coming out from that nearby mosque? as they run out… the screaming, joyous mob, to rip the skin off the bones of the still living man…

[47]

Spectrum of Remembrance For Yaakov remembered Yellow, the grave in the Middle Eastern heatnondescript. your memory kept cradled in thin fluid. Green, the color of lifethe color of a four-leaf clover, of the shimmering breast feathers of…a hummingbird. Green, I hold your face in my handslike a growing thing. I water it. I cry for it if it droops. I sing for it as sap rises in the spring. Green, I hold your face in my hands like a growing thing.

[48]

Blue Spectrum of Remembrance Blue. Blue can be so thin. They say that you took chances. You stood on the steps of the resort, veteran of the Golani Brigade, survivor of the Yom Kippur War. You pretended to do an expert karate chop on the iron railing, “I’m going to break this!” …Your blue fragility stays with me along with the knowledge that you were stabbed sixteen times with the butcher knife, pulling yourself into the street, identifying your killer…knowing that you were dying… Indigo, the gathering darkness, shadowingthe water, the mirror turned to the wall… Violet, over and over again in spring flowers the soil moist, touchable under the leaves. In the streets of Jerusalem, your namenumber 69 on a right-wing group’s sign listing Jewish political victims crying for blood…more blood for blood [49]

Saying Kaddish The mourner’s prayer… I return alone to synagogue. I want to express, I need to belong, I need to …………reconnect. I didn’t stop believing in God… I hadn’t stopped believing in God… this time. But, and because, and what was I left with? I was left with saying Kaddish for you, with loving a dead man, and with hard truths. I wasn’t with you that night. I couldn’t have stopped the knife. Who would have said Kaddish for me? Khalil sharpened the knives in the kitchenchoosing the largest, the sharpest one to cut off your life… to bring on your soul’s cry, and my own answering cry. The mourner’s prayer ...the prayer of endings

[50]

The Maayan The maayan, the spring… (or the fall) the true story maayan… in Ein Kerem where Elizabeth stood talking to her cousin Mary. (Actually, I doubt that they stood.) Being girls they probably both had their shoes off and were throwing pebbles into the water and braiding each other’s hairMary’s head lying in her cousin Elizabeth’s lap as each told the other about the blessed child that they were carrying (they were) inside and beside… This maayan, this spring… where in 1949, all the women, all the Moroccan women, were forced to draw water…when they were put to live in Ein Kerem, after they made their way from Moroccan boats made from bulrushes like Moses’. …But unlike Moses they had no special protecksia, and didn’t end up living in Pharaoh’s palace, eating off Pharaoh’s golden plate.

They did have a roof over their head granted by Turkish law and they did have water… if they were strong enough to walk with a heavy jar in the heat to… [51]

The maayan, the spring (and the fall, the death) the place, the hour, The Angel of Death drew up my Yaakov, to drink, to carry away in a jar on his head, to take away from me, from life… after the terrorist, murderer, the deranged man, rearranged Jacob’s evening (prayer, life) …with his big knife. Yaakov took an hour bleeding into the water, - into the maayantook an hour to die, as he waited for the Angel of Death to come and announce, as he laid with his head on the stone lap of the maayan, and the rosemary scented wind braided his hair, as he lay down to die… at the Maayan…… the spring.

[52]

Leaving Charm O Sheik

A peace plan, a truce, always involves moving… The Bedouin women with no passportswill be returned to no man’s land whether they are wanted or not, whether they want to or not… The doctor in charge of the clinic is packing for Africa and divorcing his wife, leaving behind his mistresswho will move to Tel Aviv-whether she wants to or not, whether they want to or not.

[53]

And They Danced on His Grave The ones who danced on his grave clapping, Prancing, shouting Whula! with undisguised glee. What were they saying about themselves? Rabin wasn’t a saint. Shalom Chaver was only something some American said, not appropriate for us to keep on and on with. One could hope, we aren’t that empty or… …that at a loss… keening forever over the grave. They danced on Sadat’s grave too …. the time before. Sadat, not one of the beautiful people; Egyptians-One can meet -playing all over EuropeNo! not a green-eyed Pharaoh or Cleopatrabut neither one of the eyeless peasants; the ones that wandered the Sinai on patrol, the year after Israel gave it back-stumbling along with sticks on their shouldersno guns to go around….

[54]

From many times (and lives) before, Sadat, it seems… had burned off the emoting, the irrational… that duped Arab sense of self …somewhere…had burned off the self-deception …………………during one of the wars.

“No more war, no more bloodshed!” was a succinct enough statementno keening, no dancing

[55]

In the Night I Dream I Am the King’s Stallion Dedicated to King Hussein of Jordan My dream …I am your horse, your prize Arabian stallionas white as the moonlight dripping down onto my strong muscled neck. White mane stirring, nostrils flaringI stand still on the Negev hill, hidden by the dark. Warily I watch you. In the night’s silence, I had almost forgotten the grip of your legs as you rode me yesterday, (or some other yesterday.) We both sweated… I from fear and running; the running that I ran when you for the first time… put all your weight on me, when we ran as one. I did not try to throw you off. Remembering now, I stand keeping a little distance, thinking.

[56]

Mahane Yehuda Market

[57]

[58]

Young soldiers all wanting something fastand laughing or notbecause they’re young-and laughing or not. The units and squadsthe groups and herdsof the young soldiersequally mixed between white facesand the sons of Shebaand smiling or notbecause they’re young soldiersand smiling or not-all gathered at the watering holein boots- and belts- and clipsand jesting or not-because they’re young soldiersand jesting or not.

[59]

The Embrace The embrace between the young Ashkenazi soldier and his Ethiopian comrade who has strolled into the Food Court at Canyion Jerusalem looks like the embrace of lovers who have made a suicide pactlooks like the embrace of loversreunited after being separated by war-each thinking the other deadlooks like the embrace of loverswho know that all can end quickly-and that machine guns -and bullet clips presented-to each others aidare only a proffered gift- not a charm – as are flowers for you on Shabbat. They keep arms draped around each other’s shoulders-heads turned to each other- as they walk off in to the clouds-and become some other fallen one’s mother’s sight-

[60]

Stepping On a Mine Brave young leader of the unit – gone into Lebanon on patrol. He saw the mine, as some of the men under his leadership, were about to, would have… stepped forward and onto it. So he made a mad lunge and beat them to it. He didn’t die. He merely had to have his face re-sewn together; lost the hearing in one ear. And Elise, who had already questioned his uprightness, his steadfastness, his quest, to better himself through the army – abandoned him. I met him after the movie, in Tiberius. He turned his head to hear me. His face was frightening, in that you could see that he was formerly beautiful, butwas beautiful no more. His face was tilted, off-center, jarring. He said that he was getting married anyway… not to Elise.

[61]

The One Question

You will say that you have suffered no big losses in your life, …but I know that you have. You have hidden your losses from yourself, do not let yourself feel them. What do you call growing up with the knowledge that your father survived the camps at age 19 by preparing murdered Jewish bodies for the ovens-fresh bread?

[62]

The Hidden

[63]

[64]

The Hidden The story of Isaac and Ishmael When you married me you didn’t marry a Jew. You married an island of security. I couldn’t understand why your “best” friendbelonged to a group whose party scream is, “Not one more drop of Jewish blood!” It wasn’t a subtle message…. This land is mine. This land is mine. The butterfly fluttering of those lines in his eyes and yours… [65]

Your parents taking but not accepting our marriage. Their successfully educated Arab doctor son marry a divorced Jewish woman with a child? They wanted to know on whose side you were -standing now? This land was mine. This land was mine. I saw the butterfly fluttering-s in their eyes.

[66]

And Hidden (A popular but lonely doctor at Hadassah)

[67]

They didn’t know what you were hearing from every corridor opening at Hadassah; that you hid behind me whenever we had to rent an apartment. I didn’t know a better way either. How could I ever get this land and you to feel like mine if I didn’t fight for it? Something inside of me wanted to prove ...that we could live together.(but) You wanted no issues. I wanted to wave our marriagearound like a flag. You wanted me to be quiet You could not forget the bicycle bomb outside the movie theatre; the blast, and the maimed and the screaming. Your first instinct was that of the doctor; the second was of the Arab suspect, running for his life.

[68]

Both of us hiding Both of us hiding our identitiesI the daughter of an alcoholic who was forced to play “house” more than a bit too close for comfort with daddy. I certainly wasn’t going to play doctor with you. You would have had to answer questions that you couldn’t bring yourself to ask. You, the son of violent emotions and the “shame” of ’48. You hid behind your doctor’s clothes wanting to save and only be good and never let anyone ever feel any pain. I remember the look on your face when that woman died on you beside the road, your shoes covered with her blood.

[69]

I was forced to make the Choice While I played the family conscience, tried to control every terror from behind my psychologist’s degree; instead of learning to love your outward face, which was always on duty, I only learned to pretend that I wasn’t angry. If you accepted other people being Jews, There wasn’t much you could do about it, was there? I paid too much to support you, to accept you. You should have been proud when I took apart the soldiers who were giving you a hard time at the airport. You’d saved enough Jewish lives. I shouldn’t have given away the Kiddush cup, the Shabbat candlesticks, my prayer book. Holocaust day should not have been passed in complete silence, with an absolute lack of words.

You needed me Jewish or not at all.

[70]

[71]

-The Newspaper Headline-“Arafat is dead” I’ve seenThe Burial Society up in the trees looking for body parts of people that were riding in the bombed-out bus, twisted and mangled; turned over by the road, as I go by I’ve feltThe shock in the air as the roof of the bus 18 in front of me, blew off, and an object which I later learned was a women’s leg, flew off across the length… of the soccer field in front of the school. I’ve felt the shock in the fact that I missed taking that bus… by seconds… …and that I had two six year old’s in hand, who could have been turned into tree poems, and pieces of bodies, searched for by the Havra Kaddisha as the sun sank… and another woman rode by on yet another bus

I’ve been a part of[72]

I’ve been a part ofThe crowd in Tel Aviv Squarethe very festive crowd that backed Rabin in his moves to peace, in spite of the terrorists, in spite of the hard liners, in spite of the kidnappings, i n spite of the daily blocking of my road home, by hard liners, who wanted revenge, not peace. I lived two doors down from our Prime Minister. I’ve been a part of - the crowd when he sang Sheer le Shalom (Song of Peace) a part of the crowd that were still singing, children on our shoulders, as he was shot down for making peace, bleeding on his copy of Sheer le Shalom, stuck in his breast pocket. That was the first timeand the last time that he sang in public… I was part of- I was part of this crowd, and can never hear the Song of Peace……without crying.

[73]

I’ve seen. I’ve seen-an Arab’s point of view, an Arab’s point of emotions; an Arab’s lack of proportion. For eleven years, I was married to an Arab from Beit Jalla, born after 1948… born after “The Shame” I’ve seen and I know the way that an Arab smile hides every real feeling. You’ll never know whether the smile hides love, or knives, …or a thirst for revenge… I’ve seen That real sadness is never allowed in this culturehyperbole aboundsjoins an inflated sense of injustice, an inflated, over dramatized sense of lossthat allows for no analysis of reason -just blood, and blood, and more blood….

[74]

I’ve felt what happens, when you offend an Arab’s sense of pride. It is a Feudal Society that allows a brother to kill his sister, if she offendsthat allows people to be owned by their land owner, their Feudal lord, of which -Arafat was one- corrupt to the bone, owning to the point, where he allowed no loss, especially no loss of pride

I’ve felt I’ve felt what happens when you offend an Arab’s sense of pride; (That’s the worst sin to an Arab.) One that you or I, through reasoning, cannot understand I’ve been a part ofI’ve been a part of-a part of Arab culture, Arab blood, Arab kinship, and I understand, I can understand, (why) I went into the West Bank, long after it was safe, (long after I was forbidden by reason of curfew to do so...) [75]

I’ve seenI’ve seen with my own two eyes, to my horror what five-year old’s have become, under Arafat’s “protection” and tutelage”.

I’ve seen… I’ve seen…. their mindless, hateful eyes when reciting what was once a pride of poetry. Their poetry declamations and conteststhis was once what they were good at, having eight different words for snowflake. Now, all I’ve seen in this five year old’s eyesshould be sacrificed, should be burned, as he declaims how we will eat all Jewish hearts like mine, as he rams his fists down his throat- to show me how.

I’ve felt-

[76]

I’ve feltrage watching from Jerusalem, as our border patrol man, was kidnapped from his jeep, dragged to a police station in the new nation of Palestine, and ripped apart alive, right in front of my eyes, as a whole village of supposed human beings cheered and danced, mindless to anything except mob emotion… which has been praised by Arafat as -indomitable spirit

I am a part ofthe nation called Israel, watching television as we did a surgical strike. The next day on that same police station… after we’d given a warning to clear it …and it was empty… we took out the second story cleanly, where they’d started torturing our man.

I watchedI watched on the television screen, as in an overlay of English print-CNN was screaming – was proclaiming that we were bombing the innocent Palestinian populace….Yet-again

[77]

I’ve seenThe way that an Arab crowd turns into an Arab mob, especially at a funeral… Someone will start shooting into the air and suddenly everyone is hysterical… ripping their clothes off, screaming incessantly, throwing themselves on the coffin, having to be dragged off, screaming all kinds of invective, screaming so loud… who knows when anyone will ever feel sad or anything at all, besides this drama…

I’ve feltI’ve felt- what it’s like to be a part of crowds like this… because I’ve been a part of crowds like this….an observer. I’ve been a part-of this culture, this people, to see, to feel, to be a part of; to know what is behind the headlines… …and when I saw-the newspaper headline…

”Arafat is dead”…

you can’t imagine how much I wanted to

……………………………!!!!!!!!!

[78]

The Dubbke The muscled white sides of the stallion/groom heavehis shirt/skin sticking to him through the sweat and the noise; shots fired through a hail of candy-thrown ashe stands tethered in his fineryshaking the bells on either side of his faceflanked by his two brothers-black and greynostrils flaringas they wait for the white bride-coming. Led in a spray of palm branches, flowers, and thrown candiesfrom the other side of the villageshe emerges- from behind the mirage of the sun’s flareemerges-an oasis of beauty, at age nineteento toil the sands of the fieldsof her husband’s dreams.

The pink and black striped dancing woman [79]

at the front of the solemn/gay procession, whirls, waving palm branches, whirls, like a dervish, or dust dervish, she whirls, ululatingthe drums’ heads pounded by palms, coated with shouts and wedding baksheesh, candy thrown out of windows and doors, pouring down from the skies, onto the wedding procession… Shouts and shots and candy, ```\\\‘‘//\\```~~~~\\// \\ `` whirl madly in the air Mustaches/masculinity/ man/men/ ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////////// run/exit/jump/…..walk out of doors cross paths-bend low- and ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// //////////////////////////// pull out handkerchiefs, waved in one handthe other hand- pounding a drumwaving a sword- shots- shouts- wind- line up-//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

////////////////////bending rhythms-

thrown to the sky-////////////////////////////// [80]

bowed to the earth winding like a river-///////// heave up through the village fed by pouring floods- pouring out of open doors… The village- fed bypouring floods- pouring out of open doorsbyways and side ways of the village currents////////////////////////////////////////////////////// .The village rises in a mighty washing wave of groaning////////spewing mono toned incantations in bended rhythm- thrown to the skies/////////////// bowed to the earth’s cogs-heave up; spewing along the colors of the bride’s blush in a lava flow//////////////////// which will leave a permanent caste of the life of the village in the dust.

[81]

Henna Henna seeds ground to a paste-stirred with fine oilapplied in stars and moons…in hands against the evil eye to the skin of the bride… and then the groom… in two separate rooms… the scent of jasmine and coffee flows…between the …window …and the door… “Khalil, Khalil” …blow your flute…blow a melody …onto the dream s of the bride…send a new white stallion …to the groom. The moon hangs over…white… in the night sky …the air heavy with orange blossoms…

Abir…with kohl rimmed eyes…heavy with her first child… peers… out from… behind her veil. Henna ground into a paste…… applied in stars and moons…in hands against the evil Eye …to the skin of the mother…as the moon peers… down from …behind its veil of cloud…heavy… the air …scented and soft… with orange blossoms……… Sami paints patterns with henna…on the white flanks of the Stallion…paints kohl…around the eyes of… the Running Wind whistles and…sings to his favorite…as he puts on the red woven halter with bells attached all up and along the Desert Wind’s face…the beautiful moon faced Arabian’s face…like a sand dune…under the white moon… the smell of the slaughtered lamb… strong.

[82]

The Price of an Identity

Villagers crossing over bulldozed entrance to village

[83]

Security well for throwing unexploded bombs into [84]

The Price of an Identity The Baptist, the Methodist, and the American tourist ask me If I speak Israeli, Jewish, or worse yet-Do I speak Israel…...? uneducated questions that run around in my head like un-cashed checks; irritating me, as unhealthy as an un-drained swamp. I stand idly staring out the hot windowsill of the bussee shimmering in the heat, a mirage from Hell; Teddy Kolleck Stadium, straining in the 120 degrees of heatthat hasn’t let up in ten days. We all sweat in the non air-conditioned bus; the flare of the sun on the glass of the window… almost a prophesy. Maybe we haven’t listened enough to our prophets, to our inner selves, to our moral... Light onto the Nations… ingrained into us by our ethical founding fathers …. inner selves. They were the innocent. ..We are the indubitably, inexorably……………. experienced

[85]

Once more... and perpetually… we argue, and squabble amongst ourselves…debating, questioning, wondering how to steer the ship of our “chosen ness”, ….the ship of our re-gained land onto the horizon… The fallacies of our victory in ’67, catching up with us… burning in the heat of the sharav…and … our dilemma. The least of us, the worst of us feels equipped, to know and to debate with the highest and the best of us. Why? Having undergone that furnace that wiped off our faces, and those of our sisters/ our grandfather’shaunting melody…played on a Ghetto violin... turned to ash-while the world stood by and boogied… while our people burned… and while world leaders who were… “technically unable to burn the crematoria” …very handily bombed the tire factory a block away from the smoking chimneys… of our sweet mother’s burning ashes… Who are we to trust, who are we to believe? What tourist’s questions are we obliged – to answer? Scored by the primal memories of the burned we are deeply impressed with the knowledge that we are alone in the world and that if on anyone we can depend only on each other…… on our own country… on our own selves. [86]

The world tendering unto us , the “Israel’s”, wounding questions……………wounding judgements when we must fight…………when we always must fight…

Hell…. when our children will have to fight … when we are dead……. When we are dead…we will be their burned memories.

[87]

An Israeli

An Israeli [88]

is one who is born in “The Land” who grows up knowing all of the pioneer thinking, about a joyous return to working the land; and …all the songs and dances performed …at night, after a day of hard labor in the fields… knows about the debates going on around the campfire, and an Israeli is the one gathered in by a rescue operation, or the one like Ruth, who chose to be a part of the Israeli people saying to her-Israeli mother-in-law“Your people are my people, where you go, I go. Your fate is my fate...Your future my future… and my children’s future” An Israeli (my son) is the one who is born in “The land”; who’s first words, whose mother tongue is Hebrew…even though his mother only speaks to him in English. trying to retain another language for him. She speaks to him in Englishhe answers her in Hebrew

[89]

An Israeli is one who in emerging boyhood is aware of

many rich heritages… Middle Eastern, European, African, Western... They are combined, and present in his daily life and in his small country. So that when he is young… he’s been on an airplane. If he’s at least two, he will know to ask… what language they speak? in the country that they are visiting. He may even ask what the currency exchange rate is … because as an Israeli, he is acutely aware of being surrounded by hostile neighbors, by closed borders and…that getting into places like: Syria and Iraq, is not possible- except through imagination, or perhaps the subterfuge of going out of Israel on his Israeli passport, then turning around, and using his American or European passport, to get into Damascus… An Israeli is one who because of the above, needs to get out, to explore… He’ll explore every nook and cranny of anyplace- that he can get in.

[90]

An Israeli is one who after the obligatory army stint, and the even more obligatory need to be available on a few hours’ notice, to come back to defend loved ones in case a war is about to occur-without notice... as it surely is

After spending his boyhood wandering and becoming familiar with every centimeter of his country…… laying overlays of history on top of a topical map, military... or notwhich might be called studying religion and the Biblebut which is not. It is merely called history… or an in-depth account of your Aunt Ruth’s life. An Israeli, after spending his years of emergence into a boy, and then a man…goes off backpacking working his way around the worldgoes anywhere, and everywhere… setting up his falafel stand in China, or Japan. Maybe he learns another language in his traveling time- Japanese or Chinese.

[91]

An Israeli is the one, who, standing on the balcony grilling steaks-is approached by her 4 year old son who …has been well warned, and is aware of the possibility, of a bomb set by a terrorist…to end his young life He comes up to you in your own back yard, and tugs on your hand, pointing to an unidentified object, in his own back yard, and asks… “Imma, is that heftez hashooed… (a suspicious object)?” An Israeli is the same son, two years laterwho with his mother...keeps shifting routes around the blockaded way, trying to get home, spending an afternoon doing this… in what is usually a fifteen-minute bus ride. So, the afternoon is spent threading their way around the ever-moving roadblocks ...as soldiers try to locate the third terrorist from the attack in the morning... A few suspicious items have been blown up by detonator robots … and he knows what these robots are for… what they are doing, having no false illusions of safety.

[92]

After every attack the truly undaunted Israeli will go dafka (no translation) to buy coffee at the coffee bar that was blown up in the morning’s attack… He’ll order four cups… and he’ll sit there and drink them all with his friends, while… inside he cries for the latest victims. Between himself and his friends, three are known personally…

An Israeli is one

who ultimately can never leave his country… He can physically leave Israel... But Israel can never be removed from out of him… Every inch of the country that he’s walked with the scouts, or with friends, or by himself, has become a part of him… every bit of his blood that he sank into Israel, became a part of him… rooting him to Israel, whether he wills it …or he wills it not to be .like this. There have been plenty of times when he has not been at war …when he’s sailed surfed or dived the Gulf of Eilat... He knows every stone in the desert… ….and every stone calls him by name, a piece of his inheritance;the best part of his inheritance… …along with the worst part of his inheritance – mentioned above …and every stone is potentially a new commandment commanded to him personally. [93]

Signs Miss-belled… Or If the Choice is Between Grace Juice and Grenade Juice I stand staring at the array of juices on offer, irritated and amazed that as usual in a land where our official languages are Hebrew, Arabic, and English, and all signs are written in two or three languagesit never fails that the English is misspelled. So, I stand staring, like a Tourist in front of the juice bar, amazed. If I know Hebrew, I know that the grace juice on offer is grape juice. I know that the palm juice offered is date juice; that I’m not being offered the grip of someone’s hand. I know that the grenade juice is also pomegranate juice, the word for grenade and pomegranate…being the same and... I also know to count 23…24…25...and Quickly drop to the floor………if there really is a grenade on offer

[94]

There’s nothing like being pumped up with air from the pumps of ein brera (no choice) … or bli panika (without panic). The baby seal in you notices, that all the other baby seals, who are about to get knocked on the head, and skinned for their furs; their eyes are bulging out of their heads, in the same sad way… even though their flippers are frantically patting each other on the back, proclaiming yehei beseder (It’ll be all right) (It’ll be all right) Oh yes, in Gan we were lifted up on a chair, and paraded around to the cheerful song… Ein brera…bli panika…yehei beseder………… Ein brera…bli panika…yehei beseder…………. When we heard that Iraq, mad at America… decided that we were a closer target, as well as the Satanist ally of you know who… we all bought our tape...taped up our rooms…prepared for a gas attack … suddenly helpful one to another, once again… as cohesive and cooperative, as super glue…looking quietly at each other in long lines; helping the old lady to get her gas mask and be on her way home with her large roll of tape in hand we fortify and pass on the message…

[95]

Only in extreme situations… like when our son can’t find his shoes to go on a school trip...so we’re going to be five minutes late… do we shut ourselves in the nearest closet, behind the nearest closed door… sobbing quietly under our breathes, so that no one can hear…. “Ma yehei (What will be?) Ma yehei ba sof (What will be in the end?) We who have been brought up in the tradition of le histader(to take care of oneself)

[96]

We Faint and Shrug Our Shoulders… Rich in emotions, terse in speechour eyes like leaden marble… smoldershift shapes with each changeinside an army on alertin the arms and hips of a belly dancer who spits sweet myrrh from her sweat… from those hips that roll and grind through in occupation In the papered poems of Amichaispeaking of himself, of us in twenty-nine languages. We faint, and shrug our shoulders, …bearing arms once again… when …we should be bearing children.

[97]

Tower of Babel, Achieved in One Anna speaks nine languages: Spanish, Russian, Belgian English, Hebrew, German French, Italian, Portuguese There’s a certain symmetry in this tower-while at the EurovisionIsrael’s entrant sings… Chai, chai, chai, Am Israel od chai (lives, lives, lives; the people of Israel still lives) Yes, in pieces and coinage of Jewsthat fled and loved in whatever refugeand arms they could find that would accept, their God, as God- is one Your God is my God, said Anna’s Spanish, Russian, German mother, to her German, Italian, Cuban, Chinese fatherand you are safe, they said to their emigrating Italian American childrenlaying their caressing reassurance, on their children’s brows in Shabbat blessingthey say- “Chai, chai, chai, Am Israel od chai”

[98]

A Sense of History; of Continuity Gained from… is buried in the dirt… rearing itself up in the sandcastles of the aqueducts, that water our heads, that have outlasted any castle built. Ssand colored Braille postcards; Roman accounts of living in this land, launching themselves at usno matter what path we take to the milk houseor the Knessetlived in by so many sandals and shoes Draining swamps, plowing out the dream, Ruled by the strict morality of Zionism, Sweating, tired, and drained by bouts of recurring malaria, my grandfather could have given a shit about-accidentally discovering the floor of a sixth century synagogue-while digging an irrigation ditch. It stirred no nostalgic feeling of prayerful reverence for himConnected no dots… between him and David ha Melech (David the King)

[99]

I am different….and I am from a different generation.

Yesterday, during my walk in Ein Gedi Here, where only yesterday, Saul raged at David, looking for him, chasing him through the cavesthrough which David ran, like the gazelle, who’s rapidly disappearing rump, I am contemplating now. Saul drew out and threw his hunting knifenicking the rock, here, just here. If David isn’t careful, tomorrow Saul will hit him. His spear point will lodge exactly in that notch in the cave wall … over… there… which I run my tongue and teeth over, just to get the taste of their argument between my eyes.

[100]

The Population’s Density

We are counted the most densely populated European nation, our population packed into the narrow coastal strip from Haifa… …through Tel Aviv… to Jerusalem.

We are used to bumping elbows, having an Uzi … stuck into our faces on the bus…, rubbing noses, rubbing elbows …, getting our hair ... snagged in each other’s buttons. The guy behind you is reading your paper with you. The one sitting at the table across from you makes sure to get your attention… by giving his approval to you … for the fact that you are eating. We are in Gan together at age two. We go to scouts together, to the army together. We don’t go walking alone. We don’t go on a trip alone. [101]

This feeling of being a part of one another, carries us through the wars and the terrorist attacks (because) when one of us is hit… we all feel it.

[102]

The Population’s Density Calls for … Pelephones(Miracle Phones) But then in 1995 we invented that pelephone (…that miracle phone…) And now all of Israel is on dial tone. Walk down Ben Yehuda Street and you will see an Ethiopian wearing a kippa sitting on a bench...talking loudly into his pelephone… sitting next to that very loud blonde woman… She is talking on her pelephone

[103]

There is Shimon… walking down Hillel Street… no longer being talked to by everyone who meets his eye… but rather being an uninvited listener to……………a conversation…………………………………... ……between that guy and someone else he can’t see……but he can hear every detail.

Shimon is annoyed. And Shimon is feeling another strange feeling. ……………………………..

Shimon is feeling lonely.

[104]

Shimon

[105]

…You’re Going

From a Journal Entry and a letter sent -To a son I trust you explaining to me the things that you’re doing now; containing yourselfwith admirable self control, about various family pain. I know that you are trying to reach out beyond that. I don’t encourage you to hatebut I don’t encourage you to be walked on either. It took me longer to learn this lesson.

I am a part of the hard stuff of your growing up But I believe in, acknowledge, the greatness of your soul. I can’t guarantee its fruition… but I believe that you can. [106]

I don’t have to tell you about having a thirst for life……and making mistakes. You’ve seen me flying…and swimming through … often enough. I am part of the hard stuff…and you probably were ready, …many times, to scream out in your youth… that you could be my mother, better… than I could be…yours. And you could have been right. …But you were also wrong, because, I know, that somewhere… all along, I cherished and wished, to nourish… the greatness of your soul. I can’t guarantee…its fruition, but I believe…that you can.

[107]

Birthday Remembrances- April 19th You were the first Eden in Israel. Well not the first, the second… but the first in Israel. In the first moments, after you were born, the midwife slid you right onto my belly, to re-occupy the space that you’d just left; the outside contour, of the inside, where you’d just come from. I remember a surprised feeling, that someone had slid a wet puppy onto me. You were quite beautiful, even from the start. You were born, on the afternoon of the Eve of Pessach. With great reluctance, I left you in the hospital nursery, and went off to a Seder. I was the only one who really had to, recline for the Seder.

[108]

When you were six weeks old, I photographed you in the bath. That’s the black and white photo of a closeup of your face. Obviously, you still had memories, of living in the waters inside. You have a look on your face of being an underwater astronaut. I probably should have… taught you to swim then. Nine months old… You were running around at that age. You were very precocious, physically. When you were three months old, you tried to crawl fast, by lifting both hands off the floor, at once. You’d end up banging your chin into the floor (marble), scream, and do it again. You held yourself up, standing by the bars of the crib, at six months, when, you’re supposed to still be sitting. You walked at nine months… then proceeded to run.

[109]

You went to the Ein Kerem, slightly outrageous Gan at nine months. Israeli parents are notoriously permissive. I was an Israeli parent. I remember all the kids out on the lawn, dancing under a hose, without any clothes on. This Gan was started by two girls, who, had graduated from Hoffen, which was basically, a teacher’s school, designed to teach people, how to do “free” schools, in Israel. You were often the freest of the spirits in the gan. They said that you were a litzan (a clown), a tzaakhan (an actor), amusing everyone in the place; a natural actor, doing everything afouk (the opposite) of anyone else. If others, were listening to a story… you’d be dancing. If others, were…. Well you get the picture.

[110]

They say that you lived to the beat of your own drummer. Prophetic words, since you later, loved drums so much. You also loved dogs. When we went into a park one day when you were eleven months old, and some large dogs, very large dogs, were running around; you also ran around, and played with them. When they knocked you down by accident, you laughed… and when they rolled you around, tickling you with their noses, you laughed. This fondness of dogs carried on. You remember when you were eleven, and you ran out of the stone walls surrounding our house, and Yoshko’s dog bite youhard on the arm. You ran in to show me that you hadn’t really gotten any bites, because you had on a heavy jacket, and ….“not to punish the dog, because, it was your fault, startling the dog, by appearing so suddenly, in the opening of the wall”

[111]

You had a thing for talking to food, especially lachmaniahs or large sausages. I have a photo of you at nine months at Rutti Behari’s house. Her daughter Sheera, was hugging cutey you ..and you… You were busy, talking quite intensely to the lachmania in your hand. Really, you look like you’re doing Hamlet’s soliloquy… you know the one that goes, “To eat you, or not to eat you, that is the question”

[112]

“To eat you, or not to eat you, that is the question” [113]

You were built very beherion (sturdy). You also had very beautiful blond curls, that I delayed cutting. Whenever we went into the bank, or supermarket, people would be all over you going putzy motzy, trying to get a piece of you. We lived in Charm O Sheik for a year, from the time that you were one and a half, until you were two and a half. Do you remember running around with a half Jewish/ half Bedouin boy in Charm O Sheik? I doubt it. I introduced you to……the Arab part of our Semitic story…very early on.

I made all of your clothes, embroidering everything. A guy called Phillip, made you some beautiful handmade leather shoes, with cutouts of flowers? Stars?

[114]

Of course, this is the age when you experimented with scissors and matches. Once, I found you after, you’d cut a big chunk out of your bangs. Once, you set your jalabeya on fire. I didn’t make the jalabeya. I got it from my Bedouin friend.

When I found you, when you set yourself on fire, I found you quickly enoughthat you’d only burned a hole through the kneewhich I patched. I still have the jellabiya. The clothes that I embroidered for you, I gave to my friend Jaclyn, when she was expecting a new baby.

[115]

Cycles and Loves Basic Black, the Moon I look up at the moon, pale disc sliced thin on a chilly desert night. The moon reminding me of a primal sea, of a well drilled deep into being, all of us enveloped in basic black, in fear of ceasing to exist, of obliteration. Like a new moon, a no moonif I approach you from behind- I perceive you first like a curtain closed, but then you turn around your eyes blazing out from the black cloud, black and surprising, like one of those holes in the universe. So, look up at the moon, look up at the precious setting: the silver sliver set with precision against an obsidian black sky. Take my hand; hold tight and with the fiery darkness, think of black holes in the universe, not crippled by doubt. [116]

Rosh Hodesh

The moon is a calendar for women and Rosh Hodesh, the celebration of the new moon’s cycle is a Jewish woman’s celebration. The cycles of the moon, the ocean’s tides…a woman’s rhythms, all of them… …an endless connection, and cause for celebration. The moon has a name, and was to the Kabbalists of Sfat, the feminine side of God.

[117]

Kill the Moonlight Do you want me to look at you like I just found a long ago used up out of town bus ticket in my pocket? When did I go there? Why? Prometheus shed many a tear, many a painful tear. He burned his hand playing with matches. But he wasn’t sorry. He was never sorry. The girl in the gold Borsellino, doesn’t look like she spends her days, dissecting things. Rather she has the look of the nightof wheels and whirling. Go ask her to throw a glass of water in our faces, and to please bring on the night.

[118]

A Poem about You Running and thinking about me, passing Migdal, and still running on, feeling, thinking about us, full of effort, full of need, and wanting, and unable to outrun what is unneeded; unnecessary in your life whether merely benign, or purely hurtful, and you run on, the going not too hard, running with it, the it of existing, the running, the identity, the identifying of life through the feeling of running, until you hit kilometer 36, and then what? the pain, but running on, knowing that you cannot run straight…into my arms… at the finish line, or at any point in the race, as I am busy with my own running, running in place, and you run on, holding onto your pain for later, and I run with you, and you run with me, but where is this maslool, this lane where we are running not together and where we run on alone, to get to this place where we can be together? Migdal, flashing past, caught out of the corner of the eye, flashing past, caught in the smile to smile, running on, …..joining hands to fight the battle together, running on, hands joined, running on, running for our lives, running for the sake of our life together, even if the maslool is only existing in the shared soul, running…on [119]

Kohl Rimmed Eyes Olive oil, finely beaten, spun between the golden weight of the lime stones of the press; pressing virgin sighs back into amber colored bottles of prayer beads, squeezed between fingers oozing henna from the painted signature of the betrothal party, smelling on the desert wind a crest of scent and smile from the East… Black kohl rimmed eyes shining out from the small shining brown body of my infant love, naked except for the scarlet amulet wrapped around his wrist and ankle to ward off the sailing blue eye… The black-liquid pools/eyes of obsidian melted and grown hot again -melting the kohl ringed protection

[120]

The Log be Omer Fires Leap…

just like the children, …in hurrying, noisy clamor… after the last un-salvaged board from …the new construction site. In merry conflagration… they light up the neighborhoods… the skies…like thousands of sparking stars. They light up the hills… passing the messages of the fires… as each potato wrapped in shiny foil… is tucked in… blanketed by glowing embers. Scout and pioneer songs are sung…..long past any child’s bedtimeas multiple generations hurl sticks onto the flames, holding each other in close armed encirclementlit from within, by the light… flowing up the long tee-peed skirt, of the curling, hurling, thousands of glowing lips of celebration. [121]

The Eve before the Eve of PessachI love to wander through the streets and alleys of Jerusalem. I make the rounds to all the restaurants… to the humble falafel stand… on the corner of Ben Yehuda and Hillel Streetto the grand façade and glitter of… Kinoor David (David’s Violin) -at the King David… to The Cow on the Roof… (across from YMCA) ... to Dalia Reynaud...to the Tsiriff... to the Mifgash ha Esh

[122]

What makes this night different from …? any other night? Tonight, humble or grandthe restaurant owners and chefs, have emptied out their pantries; laying or tumbling their huge copper pans and pots out onto the streetslaying them out onto the cobbled streets, or inner courtyards-engaged in an immense laborscouring the huge pots and pans, and cauldronswith scalding, steaming waterbending their backs to their work of cleansing the cookware for the comingseven days, and seven nightsthe stiff wire brushes that they’re using, to polish the gleaming pots intoan even more gleaming order (Seder)….

Tonight-Jerusalem- not Jerusalem of Gold; but gleaming down long streets, down hidden- winding alleys and cul-de-sacs… the shine and early morning song of aJerusalem of brass and copper [123]

The Feast of Freedom The line between the promised and the boundary… of the new ways of our love story, has been written in blood; drawn up into the flight feathers, of one of our hawks, not the dove sent out by Jonah. That was a different promise that the dove was looking for signs and completion of... a different promised land.

[124]

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The taste of time(thyme) The Feast of the Un-pursued You know how much I love you. It was me personally, who painted on an arc of blood over your door, so that you would be spared the death of the first born on this night… The Angel of Death… will brush your door with her wings in passing, …. but my love, will keep you safe, …will lead you out the door, and will set you on your way, onto the path that you must go… Take a few deep breaths, and feel me around you, as you drink the various glasses of wine tonight. Take deep breathes and feel me touching you… on the shoulder… on the forehead. I am making invisible reminder markings, there in reminder that you were born to lead… and not to follow. Whether the markings…are in blood, or tears, or kisses ……matters not [126]

Bruised Time (thyme) Your mouth descends covering mine with an intensity tasting, working releasing into the air (the fair) the good scent of thyme the trodden upon scent of time… kissed thoroughly by a bee sting… released into the air (the fair, the yareed) … the good scent of time... provided, loved by, and molded to heel to… kissed by a rough and silken man (you) smiling with his mouth (you) afraid with his eyes (you) unmasked in his need (you) Needing, tasting, working... releasing into the air (the fair) the good scent of thyme the trodden upon scent of time…

[127]

as I propose marriage (now) (now) wrapping you up in my tallit. I ate you yesterday. I’m eating you when I’m born. I ate you when I died…. wrapped up in a pita and…the fair taste, the good taste of thyme (time)

[128]

The Fig Tree and the Boy Jonah Sitting in its Shade… The boy was often obstinate, Not listening to what he didn’t want to hear. He would scowl, his dark hair hanging in his eyes; breaking a branch from the fig tree, scratching around in the dust, when he especially didn’t want to listen. He had an adversity to water, loved the dust; the dusty bloom of a different kind over the figs when they were in season… He ate as many as he could fit into his belly, of the round sleek purple blue fruit, until his belly was a picture in kind of the figs that he had stuffed inside; the dust and the purple fallen fruit that his eager mouth and hand hadn’t found, coated the bottoms of his sandals and the toes on his feet.

[129]

…Jonah spent many hours under his fig tree, watching other children play and go by him, like ships out of the port of Jaffa…not talking to them, or partaking of their games, never revealing to them… what he thought, never once saying “I want to play that too!” He was a silent and secretive boy, but he loved his spot under the tree in the dust… and every year waited for the reappearance of the herds …and crop of purple fruit.

He had an aversion to water and was a pessimist about mankind’s chances at an early age…no child of mercy.

[130]

Bat Sheva’s Loofa Bat Sheva was advised of a ham sin… … of a fast approaching dust storm as she was choosing/was chosen… that day… to bath on the roof of her house …in full view of David’s entranced eyes. As he gazed out of his bedroom window… that day… …as at first he was only musing …on his soldiers and generals sent out to do battle for him… That was at first.It was very hot. There was a ham sin… and there was a dust storm …fast approaching from the East. Sweat was collecting in his darkly anointed ringlet-ed head as he shook it to clear it of a stray thought… and then …he saw her …that day…as she was choosing/was chosen… … (that day).

[131]

Bat Sheva was sixteen… safely married to one of David’s generals. She was very hot and sweating too… unused … to staying indoors so long-…so idle in the heat. She’d grown up in the provinces outside Jerusalem, and was used to roaming… and running the hills freely, as if she was a shepherd girl, as David had been a shepherd boy…on that day… on that day, when he slew Goliath with a sling shot, and a well-aimed rock. On that day when she roamed the hills and

laughed freely, and was free… and she was remembering, and sweating, and laughing, and whispering freedoms remembered memories as she picked up the loofa from the rose petal scented water, and ran lightly, flinging it full force at her serving maiden, in an explosion of the plucking of David’s harp(heart) string as David shock his head in disbelief……as he saw Bat Sheva…in all of her beauty …from the distance at which he once faced Goliath in all his largeness …on that day………………………… David shook his head again to clear it .…but it was already too late. [132]

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