.
 David Gershator




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DIVIDING  JERUSALEM
and other poems



Part I     NEWS FROM CANAAN

Part II    WORRY BEADS

Part III   PHANTOMS

NEWS FROM CANAAN

CONTENTS

Isaac’s Claim
On the Bus                                                                          In the Dark Darker than a Movie
At the Garden Gate
Apples
Tutankhamun's Chair
A Novel About Haifa  
Bound for the Sambatyon   
The Sambatyon
Beersheba
Invisible Camels
Psalm for King David                              
Bad Weather Blessing
Jerusalem Bus
Dead Sea Dancer
I Hear You
Plain of Sharon
For Uncle Yosef
Kasab   
In the Church of the Holy Sepulcher
Talking Jerusalem
At the Kotel
The Wall
Pond in the Sharon
Dividing Jerusalem
Shovels
Spring



ISAAC’S CLAIM

Scapegoats
if they’re lucky
take to the hills
and escape

the same hills
took me
long ago

the high places
of false prophets

the altars of true
sacrifice

so many
high places

so many
sacrifices

I was taken by the hills
long ago

I got away
from my father
who came after me
with a knife

__________


ON THE BUS  

You’re on a crowded bus
the black suited guy
who just got on
pushes his way toward you
suddenly he shouts like a madman
Allah hu Akbar
Allah hu Akbar
a split second panic in the gut
flash bang and it’s over
Halas! Finished!

But you’re still standing
and the guy bursts out
cackling
not an Arab not a Jew
just a plain psycho
some passengers hold him down
we wait for the police
we shake our heads over this new
Jerusalem Syndrome 
   
O Jerusalem!
oh, for the days
when all the lunatics in town
dressed in white
and claimed to be
angels
saints
prophets
messiahs

________


IN THE DARK DARKER THAN A MOVIE

It’s exciting for a child in a bomb shelter
it’s exciting to sit in the dark
surrounded by neighbors
known and unknown neighbors
it’s exciting to hear the shushing
of air raid wardens
intense last minute whispers
waiting for the sirens
waiting for the bombs to fall

an angry neighbor tells another
put out the cigarette
it’s dark it’s silent
the only movie the one in our own heads
we wait  nervous  edgy
until someone whispers
I think it’s over

we are waiting again
waiting in daylight and in the dark
we’re in the dark and out in the open waiting
hoping for the all clear

we’re waiting out in the open
out in New York, Bombay, London, Moscow, Paris, Rome
out in Baghdad, Cairo, Jerusalem all over all over
in the dark now and out in the open

we’re waiting again
the only movie
the one we put together
and try to cut cut cut
in our own heads 

__________


AT THE GARDEN GATE  

I

PLUMS
 
Blue plums of Safad
in the moonlight
glowing as plump and round
as the sacred sefirot

blue plums like the sefirot
one can talk about
until one is blue in the face
wrinkled like a prune

moonlit plums hanging
just out of reach
behind a stone wall
crowned with broken glass

forbidden garden!
the taste of Eden
beyond the wounding wall

do I take a chance
risk more than a bloody scratch
for the blue plums of Safad

II

FIGS

In the Old City
kids pelt each other
with hard green figs
throwing and dodging
mocking and laughing 
in a wild fig war
a free for all
their ammo plucked from
a convenient convent tree
loaded with unripe fruit
what a pity
in a couple of weeks
the figs would be ripe
easy to squish and smear
and eat like jam

what if a truce
were called and honored
and the figs were left to ripen
what if a hudna
was kept for keeps
the figs could be so sweet  

III

POMEGRANATES

In the pomegranate garden
I left the biggest pomegranate
for you
but you didn’t come

the birds know a gift
when they see it
but you didn’t come
another day and all that’s left
will be the dark red shell

I’ll leave it hanging there
a sweetness turned hollow
a fruit we didn’t share

___________


APPLES

no apples
in Eden
but wait
hand me
a pomegranate
will you
this is the fruit
that sheds blood
this must be it

_____________


TUTANKHAMUN’S CHAIR

Three thousand years ago
in my first kingdom
pomegranates were new in Egypt
I sat on an adult chair
my feet not touching the floor

Three thousand years later
pomegranate seeds
stuck in my throat
until a Sudanese giant
picked me up
slapped me on the back
and sent me soaring
through the sky
to my white ship
waiting to sail the Big Sea

Thanks to the Sudanese giant
I found safety
in an exploding ocean
and landed in New York
blind towers in December fog
uncle with black sedan
big eggs for the asking
milk you didn’t have to boil
festival lights of the cult
that wears a cross
electric trains for sale
a land of milk and snow
but that wasn’t enough

It was too gray
too cold
too far from Alexandria
too far from the stars over Canaan
and peacocks in Persian gardens
and young pomegranates
beginning to swell
but when I sit down now
my feet touch the ground
and I’m older than Tut

May Anubis, Ra, and Allah
bless the Nubian
and may I be lifted up again
and set on a different course
I can use another slap
on the back
the seeds of Egypt
the ruby seeds
still sleep in my throat

________________


A NOVEL ABOUT HAIFA  

Hey! expert, big expert on hummus
do you know how to make a whistle
out of mishmish?
do you know how to make a dream pipe
for a pipe dream
all it takes is a baby pomegranate
and a matchstick
lean back and make believe
do you know where Elijah sleeps
does he hide in the cave of Stella Maris
did you ever run after camels
for their garden dung
do you know where you can dig
white clay out of the Carmel
did you know the bedouin
pitching their black tents
in the shade of the carob trees
and the milkman and his donkey
making their rounds in the morning
did you ever chase after a bearded druze
with a sugar cane staff in hand
calling out the magic words: kasab kasab!
do you know where the porcupine
sharpens his quills
do you know where the mountain turtles
wait to be discovered
do you know where Birdy Street is
do you know the song of soum soum and ziv ziv
do you know how to bring down heaven
from a date palm tree
You don’t?
Where shall we start?

___________


BOUND FOR THE SAMBATYON

      Benjamin of Tudela: 12th c. Spanish Jewish explorer who was said to have reached China before Marco Polo. It was also said he sought the magical realm of the River Sambatyón, beyond which the Ten Lost Tribes could be found.

In my hand
I hold the walking stick
of Benjamin of Tudela
it’s a solid stick
that paced many roads
beat off robbers
helped start a fire

if I plant it in the ground
it will grow into the tree of Eden
or a flowering almond
depending on the wish 
of the winds

if I lay it on the ground
it will point true north
if I take the wrong road
it will twist and swerve
out of my hand
like the staff of Moses
it will play the serpent
to put me on the right track
until I speak the word
bringing it back
frozen as wood to my hand 
 
I can’t sell it
I can’t give it away
it won’t let me rest
it won’t let me quit the road
it has a will of its own
a will of iron in wood
and it leads me on and on
further than I’d ever go on my own
bound for the lights beyond the horizon
bound for the Sambatyón

___________


THE SAMBATYON

I             

WHO ELSE HAS BEEN HERE

Footprints 
footprints
my God look 
human footprints
they come close
closer or too close
to the river bank
only to be driven back...

and what’s left?
not even a handful of footprints

the river rages
stones fall from the sky
the earth shakes and trembles
the moon rises

footprints
stay on the moon
but on earth
footprints fade
into the ground

on earth
the Sambatyón
swallows up its seekers

II

MAPPING THE TERRITORY

Are the people still there
across the impossible river
Ten Tribes waiting
waiting for the One....
I can imagine the land
beyond the river
its wheat fields
wildflowers
orchards
olive groves
its horses grazing
its flocks of sheep

I can see the wings
above its dovecotes
flashing white and black
in the sunset
dipping, turning

I can smell the smoke
of cooking fires
across the river
before the river goes mad
boiling and raging again
after the Sabbath ends
and I’m forced to flee
to another country
on the border of amnesia
lost in a daze
without a name
without papers
folding and refolding torn maps
measuring distances
I can’t imagine

III

EXILE

When bored night guards
at the dark frontiers
try to stop me
I tell them I’m following a star
the star of constellation X
right away
they assume I’m crazy

that’s okay
madmen have a way
with stars
borders offer no protection
against the stars
I’ll be crazy as they come
armed with stars

I’ll rave about the heavens
and swim across the Milky Way
to a brighter shore
 
IV

BORDER SIGNS

Border signs say
no cameras no photos
no glasses
no clothing
no money
everything
must be surrendered
I go in my underwear
hands up
I’m searched
frisked
stripped
what happens next
I can’t explain
the guards open the fence
snickering
good luck!

on the other side of the fence
I dress in darkness
I dress in dust
and I walk

dressed lightly
skin and bones
I walk towards the call

V

BLACK FLOWERS

Black flowers
of the Sambatyón
your petals taste
of darkest night
and desert bread
charred on flaming coals
your seeds are embers
ready to ignite
a long migration of bones

___________


BEERSHEBA
       The Seventh Well

Baby scorpions skitter
in the moonlit powder dust                      
across the street from the minaret
of the Nabateans

gazelles half seen                                  
elope in sudden flight
a double panic bounding away
from two swords of light

your braids, your black braids
have brought me down
I can throw my shoes at that flying carpet
on which your name is woven
by a drunk recording angel
address unknown

your braids, your black braids
have let me down
I lose my grip on them and fall
down down down down down down down
into a dark well of Abraham’s seed
echoing seven times

___________


INVISIBLE CAMELS

It came to me late in life
that I was a foundling
found by an Arab shepherd girl
as she tended a herd of invisible camels
the kind that can go through the eye of a needle
which somehow gives me an insight
into the dilemmas of the Near East
dilemmas which may be herded by djinns
lurking in lamps and baked clay jars

If any advice on insoluble problems is needed
I’m always available for consultations
regarding biblical battlegrounds
and fallen angels wrestling
   dusty feathers flying
over disputed ground in Canaan

Where are the famous allergy doctors
of Baghdad Cairo Damascus
now that I need them
too many violent sneezes will blow
my library of roadmaps to pieces
not to mention what they would do
to my guardian herd of invisible camels
and my prize collection of dusty feathers

I’ll have to rub an old lamp instead
and see what it can do, Inshallah

__________


PSALM FOR KING DAVID
AFTER THE LATEST NEWS

Where can I walk in peace
without psalms of anguish
praise and pain
hoping against hope
for Jerusalem
and for peace
in the hills of Hebron

oh, David David
how lucky you were
to have a God you could talk to
and sing to
between bloodshed
and love affairs
you knew how dangerous
these hills could be

sweet singer of Israel
look at how far we’ve come
to dig fresh graves
and build with bones

why am I sick to my stomach
and who has the stomach
for what it takes
better to be blind
deaf and dumb
to all psalms

oh, David David
what would you do?
over and over we say
peace shalom salaam

but there’s no consolation
no peace in words
no balm in Gilead
no balm in any poems
or songs or psalms

___________


BAD WEATHER BLESSING

Thankgod for bad weather
let it be a blizzard
let it freeze
let it thunder let it blow
they’re predicting a storm
snow on the high points
from Galilee’s hilltops
to the mountain peaks of Samaria
even the summits of Jerusalem

let children play with snow
keep people indoors
keep cars off the roads
keep people busy keeping warm
bad weather’s a blessing
in the year of too many
stones  bullets  suicide bombers

let there be snow
on the mosques of rage
let weapons be frozen
let there be snow
on the synagogues of revenge
let everything remain
on icy hold
in nature’s ceasefire

if bad weather could only last
for a year or two
it might cool things off
footprints in deep snow
might lead the way

let peace come from the North
with more bad weather
to cool things down
to give peace a chance
if there is half a chance
in any kind of weather

__________


JERUSALEM BUS

Where do you sit
on a bus in Jerusalem
back middle or up front
what’s your favorite seat
what’s your strategy?

At what stop do you get on
at what stop do you get off
is riding a bus better
than playing Russian roulette?

That young lady sitting by herself
Sefardi Mizrahi Arab who can tell
that guy in the back with glasses
what’s he nervous about
that old man with a bundle
looks suspicious
where do these riders come from
where are they going
what bus number are they betting on?

To hell with buses!
We need donkeys
meek patient donkeys
always ready and willing
to give the Messiah a ride

We need horses
pure bred phantom horses
fiery steeds that fly by night
out of this world and out of sight
like Muhammad’s own Al-Buraq

__________


DEAD SEA DANCER

Hitching
Dead Sea road
death water
picks up sun dance
nobody picking me up
but the sun
too ready to pick up
slam down
blast me into
biblical shish-kebab
charred meat on asphalt
deep fry
Sodom and Gomorrah
turn my sweat pure salt
make me dance
belly dance
with Lot’s wife
in make believe ballrooms
of Moab

In heat waves
marriage mirage
of sun struck pillars
what more can I ask
from the road
the sun out to kill
the road out to burn
the Dead Sea
out to keep everybody
half dead or alive
afloat 
afloat
raising psalms
to crystals
in the curing brine

___________


I HEAR YOU

Where are they?
the breeze in the eucalyptus
whispers listen listen
I listen hard
I hear them now
my friends are back
yip yip yip
aoooo aoooo AOOOOOO
coming closer
closer
oh my God my God
this is my country
this is the place
where God cries
through the throats of jackals
a thousand and one nights
plus one
God cries like a baby
I laugh like a madman
this is my country

The eucalyptus
come from down under
but the jackals
born here like me
are native sons
calling in native voices
blood brothers I hear you
I hear you too well
I’m never deaf in my sleep
I hear you too well

__________


PLAIN OF SHARON

They heard me laughing
They saw me with a girl
They had a vague idea
of my plans for the road

They passed judgement
as famiiy does
over prodigal sons

"You'll make out all right
You know how to laugh"

At night I listen
to the jackals wail
They make out all right
They know how to cry

__________


FOR UNCLE YOSEF

You were in charge of the first well
deep and echoing
locked up in its little house
I recalled you every time I passed it
but it never crossed my mind
to ask about your gravesite

I froze at the flights of snowy cranes
over pomegranates at sundown
and in the evening
I took walks with my girl
through the orange groves
The land was too lyrical
to be tied up with death
The Sharon was open
and waiting for the first rains
and their song of songs

There was too much life in me
that year, at that moment
to make a move towards death
The earth moved me
and the land tasted like
the first memory of honey
I never asked to see your grave
Can I forgive myself?

In my mind you’re always tall
and you pick my up and carry me
to look into the deepest well

                                                                  Mishmar HaSharon

___________
KASAB

Near the tombs of the Sanhedrin
which aren’t the tombs of the Sanhedrin
(nothing is what it is —or seems—in Jerusalem)
I brought a five foot long stalk of sugarcane
to savor the day like a kid

Ah, sugarcane!
I loved you on Mt. Carmel when the old bearded Druze
walked down the street shouting kasab kasab
my image of Elijah the sweet prophet

I walked away from the grocery
feeling regal as any young prince in Jerusalem
with time and sugarcane juice on my hands
I walked my sugarcane staff around the hill

A gardener working a plot by his old stone house
nodded his head in greeting
He said remember the taste of kasab
when we were kids
I offered him a piece -- it tastes great now
a stone’s throw away from time
and the tombs, so they say, of the Sanhedrin

_______


IN THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHER  

In the Church
of the Holy Sepulcher
I hear a European
tourist lady say
“Isn’t it a shame--
Jerusalem and the Church
under control of Israeli Jews?”
Who would you prefer?
I might have asked
if too much irony
hadn’t rusted my temper
Who would you prefer?
The Crusaders?
The Jihadists?
But I keep my peace
a pent up peace
like the one imposed
by Israeli referees
on zealous monks
famous for religious wars
with each other
battling with brooms and chairs
and any other form
of dispensable furniture
busting each other’s
sanctified heads
over a door left open
over a chair moved out of place
over the “status quo”
enshrined 250 years ago--
with the poor Ethiopian monks
booted upstairs
exiled to the roof
no water no heat no light
no brotherly love
for the love of Christ

____________


TALKING JERUSALEM

Yes, I hear talk
as I walk
the Old City
from Jaffa Gate
to Damascus Gate
from Herod’s Gate
to the Lions’ Gate
from Zion Gate
to the Dung Gate
I hear talk
about dividing
Jerusalem
from Jerusalem
they’re at it again
dividing again
dividing the heart
dividing the brain
dividing the divided
the talk goes on
the heart says no
the head says yes
the head says no
the heart says yes
it’s an old song
that won’t go away
the talk goes on
the fate of the Old City
like the shofar’s cry
and the muezzin’s call
left hanging
in the air

__________


AT THE KOTEL

Origami bird
stuck in a crevice
of the Western Wall

A child asks
will it fly

One dove
one memory
folds into another

Folding and unfolding––
the last fold
abracadabra!
a paper prayer
l’chaim

__________


THE WALL       

I

The memory is clear.
October 1945
I’m walking to the Kotel with my mother
She says: “Stay with me. Hold my hand.”
My mother’s nervous for some reason
We walk towards the souk
down David Street
down to the bottom

We see the Wall: drab, gray
weedy bushes growing in the upper stones
a walled Arab house shadowing the stifling alley
a few old men praying
a dead end

This is it?
This is the glorious Wall of the Beit Hamikdash––
this all that’s left of the magnificent temple?

My secular mother touches the wall
slips a piece of folded paper
between the cracks
 
II

A young soldier apologizes
searches my bag
and waves me on
“Okay, the Wall is yours.”

I walk across the plaza
my mother’s ghost at my side:
“Stay with me!”

Eyes closed
both hands pressed
against the Wall
the stone still warm
from the afternoon sun
I push time back

III

No Lion roars forth
from Mt. Zion
only an electronic muezzin
crackling from a loudspeaker
ALLAHHU AKBAR
ALLAHHU AKBAR
LA ILAHA ILL ALLAH
an amplified tape
enough to wake up the dead
and chase away old ghosts

Quiet returns
blesséd quiet
A bearded man
old as Elijah
approaches me
He asks for alms
and murmurs a blessing

Minus a coin
and a scrap of paper
I’m left face to face
with a stone

*******

Kotel--the Wall, short for Kotel HaMaaravi: Western Wall
Beit Hamikdash--The consecrated house, i.e., the Temple

__________


POND IN THE SHARON

Bedouin winds….
have you written your bible yet
Can I call your stirrings home
or am I like the egret
standing by the pond
on one leg—Hillel’s bird
a bird of passage
stopping in late spring
to search out something
something beyond reflection in the shallows
something to feed on and fly

I’ve been dizzy among the stars of the Sharon
pinned by headlights in the haystack
with a lover
seen meteors split above the cypress
plucked blood oranges in the groves

How can I explain this rapture
to the early morning taxi driver
taking the old Via Maris to the airport

Back in New York
far from the land of psalms
I’ll have to surrender a blood orange
to the customs agent
but in my mind
I’ve smuggled a lone egret
balancing on one leg
by the late spring pond

___________
 

DIVIDING JERUSALEM
        In Memoriam: Yehuda Amichai

You take the olives
I’ll take the figs
you keep the sparrows
I’ll take the doves
you take the red grapes
I’ll take the green
is there no other path
divorce divorce 
I heard a prophet preach
divorce divorce
I hear a young bride weep
is there no other way
peace peace
is there an echo
divorce divorce
you close your roads
I’ll open mine
you take the rocks
I’ll take the bones
you take the sheep
i’ll take the goats
you take the skulls
I’ll keep the tombs
fifty fifty
on the seven gates
to the city
Lion’s gate for you
Zion gate for me
Omar for you
Moriah for me
we divide Gehenna
we split Siloam’s waters
we share Dolorosa
we flip coins
for David’s Tower
you take no I take yes
you take yes I take no           
divorce divorce
I heard a man calling
to his echo
divorce divorce
I heard a blind imam
whisper to the deaf
divorce divorce
I heard a deaf rabbi
talking to the Wall
divorce divorce
a mourner’s vow
divorce divorce
an orphan’s wail
divorce divorce
you take the voices
I’ll hold the visions
you take the tears
I’ll hold the cries
you hold the breeze
I’ll hold the air
Solomon Solomon
how do we split
this baby
you take Mohammed’s horse
I’ll take Messiah’s donkey
you take the pita
I’ll take the matzáh
you take the Prophet’s suras
I’ll take David’s psalms
you beat the durbakee
I’ll blast the shofar
you chant Allah hu akbar
I’ll sing the Shema
 you make whole
the maimed and crippled
I’ll ask Ezekiel
to liven up
wake up
bring back the dead

__________


SHOVELS

Write your poems
I’ll write mine
I’ll dig my graves
you dig yours
you can’t bury
your biggest lies
I can’t bury
my oldest myths
you’ll ignore my poems
I’ll ignore your poems
after a while we’ll hear
the sound of shovels
the sound of my shovel
the sound of yours
sound the same

we’ll follow the shovels
into the hole

_____________


SPRING

Cyclamen and anemones
a riot of wildflowers
what a day to live
for the love of flowers

in the sunny street
a riot of slogans and stones--
what a day to die
for the love of stones






WORRY BEADS

CONTENTS

Ghazal of Amber Beads 
Strange Appetites                                 
Ghazal of the Other                               
Love Beside Itself                                  
Girl Who Loves Rumi                               
Ghazal of the Unattainable                     
Sleepwalker                                          
Homeless                                               
East and West 
Fearful Fortunes                                   
What Green Sufferings
Conflict Over Conflict
Ghazal of Sick Crows
Ghazal of the Pleiades
Passwords
Ghazal of Bethlehem                         
Storks                                                   
Ghazal of Jerusalem 
   


GHAZAL OF AMBER BEADS

The wine disappears in the mouth of a drunken sage
A blind translator hands me an empty page

I worry the beads in hand, a shepherd of stones
The ruins of Babylon litter a babbling age

Are you married to your calculating heart of hearts?
I fall into a midnight collapse, the opposite of rage

There’s no refund for clay gods or sky gods here
We pay to release white doves from an iron cage

Come inside in the name of a loving ambush
Come alive to where our bones may click and engage

Searching for an address you come to my door
every address except yours swept off the stage

Understanding that there’s no understanding--
the understanding that lets us disengage

___________


STRANGE APPETITES

I’ll eat umbilical words
in the silence of my mother

I’m not hungry enough yet
to eat the moths in a mosque

Look! Dates, golden dates
sweet as bullets hitting a bull’s eye

Someone’s driving to the Dead Sea
Am I in the death seat?

There’s a bag of salt in my lap
I don’t know how it got there

Pardon me--I have to answer the angels
whistling in my right ear

____________


GHAZAL OF THE OTHER

Why this quest for another
when every night you sleep with the Other

The woman you seek...is she human
What’s so special with this other Other

So many changes leave you sleepless
Why bother with this blinding Other

Come on grow up get over this pitiful passion
She is what she isn’t...there is no Other

Poet, go chase your fly-by-night lover
One nervous breakdown deserves another

___________


LOVE BESIDE ITSELF

I can’t define love to save myself
Who created the goddess?

She’s not part of my faith
Why worship a solitary One?

Not God, not I, not one woman
can define the clay of love

A heart is beating that I ignore at some risk
Why do I care if it’s yours or mine?

Take your belief in redemption to the cemetery
Better yet walk naked to the North Star

What do you know about hopeless love
at the sharp end of a knife?

Your lover sleeps peacefully near you
How often have you thought of decapitation?

What engines drive the saints to madness?
Who was the first fanatic to take his cue from lightning?

You haven’t loved the night enough
to love the darkness with no reason

____________


GIRL WHO LOVES RUMI

Girl who loves Rumi, what do you search for?
I hold to the lyrical religion of disappointments

Your hand searches a bed of polished stones
How many seeds in a pomegranate?

Afraid of asking and being asked
I run through a fever of responses

Search for the bells and you catch the sky
Search the darkness and you find yourself

The shadows of old languages
bounce off a connoisseur of echoes

Search for the jasmine that leads you on
Search for the window and the open door

Girl who loves Rumi, what do you search for?
Some meaning in the game of innocent falsehoods?

Innocence! I wipe spilled milk off the floor.
Your dress is my rag.

_____________


GHAZAL OF THE UNATTAINABLE

Give your bones the choice of winter or May
I long for the unattainable and sleep on what you say

Ah, woman, I wake up to the silent treatment
Sleeping policemen shake up the dying day

Partners in crime suffer the same horoscope
A lottery of losses is the game in play

My fortune for today: get another fortune
My fortune for tomorrow: same as yesterday

You wrote in code on the calendar
Your words hid in the open: winter words I salted away

You fell off the planet––I’ve come down to earth
You were a woman, not a metaphor for clay

___________


SLEEPWALKER

What calls you in the silence
Let it come to your door

The mountains beyond words
bring the word from the mountains

At the brightest window I close my eyes
I trip over shoes in the darkness

O Jerusalem! I’ve been poisoned
by too much learning

I must use a painted key
to open a painted door

The sand beyond words
scatters the words beyond sand

Sleepwalker! the sound of your passing
gives the night a dark name

___________


HOMELESS

Homeless in a labyrinth
I lose the thread of meaning

You seek some shade of meaning
I’m satisfied with staying out of the sun

The man and woman inside my skull
fight over the light switch at midnight

An ambulance waves its whip over abandoned sleepers
A grave digger’s dog howls after forgotten fires

You slam the door shut, rattling windows
glass always open to attack

Your careless words set my house on fire
You toss me a bone: I toss it back

____________


EAST AND WEST

Who can decipher the East and its caves
the West and its equations

East and West each has a favorite lamp
a favorite bird, a favorite fear

Who can teach unknown languages
to simultaneous interpreters of dust

I lead a crusade of candles
working its way through ice

I tattoo unknown signs
on the skins of strangers

There’s no lack of dark streets
for sirens to run their grief home

___________


WHAT GREEN SUFFERINGS

What green sufferings the notorious grass must undergo
Our shadows touch innocent bystanders in the presence of lamps

What father doesn’t sharpen the knife for the altar
Where’s the horizon that doesn’t sacrifice the impossible sun

I burn in the blank eyes of suicidal computers
In the supreme court of frontline musicians I find my grace

Mirrors buried in the eyes of self-immolating saints
free me from a last ditch effort to understand this sawdust

Sawdust on a spider’s web outlines my captivity
I’ve given up on her face among the faces on the wall

One by one you and I build by casting stones at still waters
I call for secret weddings in the beds we haven’t made

___________


FEARFUL FORTUNES

There’s a conspiracy of eclipses
It’s getting harder to leave the house

Look around you and you will see a gift
said my free fortune for the day

What can a jail term do for dust?
The more dust, the more I can write in it

There’s a conspiracy of small spiders
hiding under the bed

For the outlines of a symmetrical language
I decorate the webs with fine dust

What dust unifies us at ground zero?
So many flags frighten the birds

It’s getting harder to emerge from an emergency
I’ve never contributed blood to any cause

If something happens, and it will
who can use this poet’s blood?

___________


CONFLICT OVER CONFLICT

Mother tongue ripped out: what more can I say?
Even with a volley of stones the old songs don’t break

The mourner’s flute at night: to whom does death belong?
In my mouth and yours the thorns kiss at midnight

The dovecote’s on fire: will the doves return to a diet of ashes?
Digging into the dry stream only brings up dirt and jackal bones

The victim and the lover: do they sleep under the same covers
The symbol of beauty, O Lebanon! I choke on your name

What side of the thorny riverside is the other side?
The song of water is written in blood: what more can I say? 

___________


GHAZAL OF SICK CROWS

For the milk of human blindness
let the bones do battle

The gathered strength of straw
sweeps the mountains clean of dew

At sundown I resign from the work of shadows
to catch up with smoke

Who welcomes the company of sick crows?
No one counts bells for a living anymore

No one turns the sand upside down
We burn with the first language of fear

No matter how many rivers are arrested
the bridges continue to burn

__________


GHAZAL OF THE PLEIADES

Impossible to go wrong with the Pleiades
At a throw of the dice snake eyes freeze

This chancy verse: driftwood in a foreign harbor  
Sappho’s ghost cuts through anemones

Let Orion’s triplets be our clandestine guides
leading the hunt for the morning breeze

We counted on midnight sisters once
seven stars traveling under false identities

Orion arrives a thousand years late
I fear the fear that brings gods to their knees 

Whose ship was it that ran aground
trying to evade the lure of metamorphic ladies?

On an island without crows I’m not complete
What blue islands can I rescue from rising seas

My passport forbids traveling in the dark
Mars rides high tonight, the earth ill at ease

___________


PASSWORDS

Copper bracelets necklaces of garlic
Nothing circles us, nothing protects

A bird’s shadow poisons the water
Thorns of regret draw blood

What can I make of my nakedness--
one bed for myself, one for my shadow?

Shout your name across the border
Water knows no frontiers

Whisper your password in the rain
You won’t convince the river

Cross the border and you’ll find
the bird you once destroyed

In a house with no doors
I shout come in come in

Poet, not only your fears grow old
The cure for sour grapes is wine

___________

GHAZAL OF BETHLEHEM

Jupiter is going to give Sirius
a run for the brightest brightness this Christmas

Roadblocks took over the little town
Local merchants won’t be doing any business

Tourists once came by the bus load
to see the church’s opulent emptiness

A Franciscan monk once showed me the manger
but there’s another, he said, with mock distress

Hot soup for supper once, years ago in Manger Square
The town’s reborn to bloodshed: bullet holes bear witness

The town that was isn’t the town that is
The rebirth of innocence comes with no address

___________


STORKS

The ram’s horn no longer blasts your bones into roses
The candelabrum no longer ignites fierce tribes of thorns

What leaps out of sleep like the dawn gazelle?
What voice shakes the dew off the mountains?

Old prophecies come and go like beaten echoes
driven into a wall of misunderstandings

You lost the war on mirrors and return time and again
to pick up the bits and pieces from the bottom of the harbor

Only an ancient migration of storks
can lift your eyes to voices out of the blue

___________


GHAZAL OF JERUSALEM

I find myself in theory on the road to Jerusalem
I lose myself among gazelles leaping Jerusalem

It’s easy to get lost in the labyrinth but if you dream
you may find your way in and out of Jerusalem

It’s not easy to keep on dancing with gravediggers
On the Mount of Olives I turn my back on Jerusalem

I did a double take when I saw you or thought I saw you
It must have been your double, taking me for a fool in Jerusalem

Your voice, your deafening voice!
Too many echoes for one pair of ears in Jerusalem

Can you soothe the aching heart of Ishmael with your harp, David?
Can a psalm answer the murderous love of Jerusalem?




PHANTOMS
CONTENTS

Brooklyn Xmas
Brothers                                                    
Waiting for the Right Time                         
Last Night’s Doubleheader                           
Drinking Glasses
Jars                                                            
33 Union Square West  
OD on the Obit                                                       
Dying Instructions
So Many Voices
Blue Numbers
For My Unknown Cousin                                        
Akiva Poems                                 
Photo from the Warsaw Ghetto                    
We Are Here

 

BROOKLYN XMAS

First ride on the Broadway El:
we climb down the long staircase
and walk toward the lights
over Graham Avenue
so many lights

--What are those lights, Ima?
Hanukkah’s over
--They’re for the Holiday of
the One Who Was Born 
--Who was born?
--The Notzrim’s messiah

I never heard of this Messiah
his lights looked half gay half sad
shining for some other people’s holiday
people I didn’t know yet

I knew our Messiah had not come
not in Europe
not in Brooklyn 
not anywhere
but it was good to see the lights
rows and rows of lights
and discover a new holiday
lighting up the night
in America

__________


BROTHERS

An only child looking into the mirror
I see a lot of my father’s only brother
the photo I found doesn’t lie
it’s shockingly familiar

Abba, is that your brother I ask
and I’m told about vast forests
deep Lithuanian forests
and how they can hide an army
an armed forest always at the ready
and I become the keeper of the forest
and I become my father’s brother’s keeper

Oh, he was a fighter
he wouldn’t go without a fight!
and if the forest could hide an army
it could certainly hide one man....
there’s a face behind every tree
and one of them is shockingly like my own
and one of them sometimes calls
when all the summer leaves seem still--
pssst pssst  over here

____________


WAITING FOR THE RIGHT TIME

I was told about magical forests
where the partisans would come out
when the time was ripe

My father’s younger brother
was never heard from
after the war

Those magical forests
went up in flames

Like Hanukkah menorahs
they keep on burning
they consume
and are not consumed

those forests green with hope

__________


LAST NIGHT’S DOUBLEHEADER

1990 and Lithuania’s in the news again
morning noon and night
it’s Lithuania this and Lithuania that
more news from Lithuania
than I’ve heard in the last four decades
Hooray for Lithuanian independence!
and from 1939 to 1945 there was no news at all
from Lithuania
just waiting waiting to hear something anything
my father glued to the cathedral radio
his whole family out there in darkest Lithuania
hidden away behind the radio
coming on so boldly jauntily every evening
with its swinging March Slav and its mighty nightly news of war
and tanks and artillery and Stalin teaching the Germans
how to say uncle--Oh Uncle Joe! and then it’s over
and the radio carries no more tanks and planes and artillery
and I’ll never get a chance to be a general now
and the radio is quiet and the radio doesn’t tell
and the radio keeps its secrets to itself
and the radio plays games telling nothing
hiding something
fathers brothers mothers children
families and more families
lost in this strange cold dark place called Lithuania
and one day the radio starts talking numbers
meaningless numbers
and my father waits and waits to find out
what’s behind the numbers
and no numbers add up to anything
no news about what happened
“My brother must’ve been a partisan, a fighter
Maybe he escaped into the forests”
and then one day father goes downtown
to look at official files big files
that arrived from somewhere with names
and numbers like a phone book and finds no name
no mention of anyone anywhere
and he comes home red eyed
the only time I ever saw his tears
and there’s no more talk
and no more singing psalms for the hell of it
and at night he bellows in his sleep like a caged bull
What is it  What is it  Wake up wake up
and in the morning he claims burning cities  flaming roofs
and running and chasing and buildings collapsing and uniforms
and identity papers and this goes on for years after dark
but he never never admits to crying and the late night bellowing
the burning cities the panic the papers the police the uniforms
become part of the family--a familiar country
never in the news  never--                                                                                                    
and over and over across the street from the Hook and Ladder
my night house my fire house my four alarm house under fire
occupied by Lithuanians Poles Russians Germans
behind the refrigerator and up and down the fire escape
no escape until Brooklyn daybreak
and the ghosts break up in my father’s skull
and all’s quiet on the Eastern Front
and on the early morning radio news
it’s baseball blesséd baseball

_____________


DRINKING GLASSES

Mother
would light a yahrzheit candle
every winter for her mother
a grandmother I never knew
to me it meant
another drinking glass

I liked to watch
the memorial candle
burn late in the night
and in the morning
I cleaned out the wax
and added another
new drinking glass
to the collection

Father
never lit a candle in a glass
he didn’t know
what happened to his parents
older sisters  younger brother
they disappeared without
a candle to their name

There was something
permanently missing
from the cupboard collection--
his side of the family

____________


JARS

Once when I opened the pantry door
and saw father’s collection taking up all the space
row upon row of empty jars  I burst out
get rid of it  get rid of the war  there’s no room
there’s enough in there for WW III and IV
we don’t need any more jars 
he picked up a jar and aimed it at my head
GOODBYE EMPTY JAR one jar less thank God

Those jars weren’t empty at all
they were filled to overflowing with family
ghosts   parents killed  whole cities executed
those jars were as good as cremation urns
those hundreds of jars and one more jar just in case
were crammed with falling skies
you can never have enough jars to hold the heavens

It was me and America against the European sky!
it was madness! or was it? 
you had to be prepared
they were building Colorado Mountain vaults
and A bomb shelters all around the country
and our five story roach trap rat trap tenement
was designated
a Nuclear Shelter
how would glass jars do at ground zero

There was no arguing against the jars
they stood at attention night and day
we had the biggest secret jar collection on the block
one of those secrets you don’t share
no one wanted to start an open war
but the hidden war went on
I replaced the small jars with bigger ones
to ingratiate myself
then I’d remove one or two to make a little space
the Cold War settled in

Those jars: soup nut borscht herring pickle
filling three needed shelves
in our three room nuclear shelter
carried crystal clear essences
distillate of100% proof Europe
they were members of the glass family
the private minyan in the closet
opaque transparent textured embossed jars
jars on standby duty
ready to answer the call
in any unforeseen emergency

We were never ready for the next war
there wasn’t glass enough in the universe to hold it off
and the empty jars containing what they contained
slowly multiplied in the pantry dark

____________


33 UNION SQUARE WEST

Thirty-three Union Square West
Mother's workplace
narrow building
ornate masonry facade
nine stories high
full of inventors and artists
seeking that gust of inspiration
but who invented sudden death
radio warnings said gale force winds
body sprawled on the sidewalk
big chunks of masonry scattered about
police couldn't identify him
head smashed by a cornice
no wallet no papers no next of kin
they said he had blue numbers on his arm
it meant he survived
it meant he was guilty of survival
it meant his number was up
it meant a cornice was loose and waiting
for the right moment
and the landlord of 33 Union Square West
should be sued but who's going to sue
it meant no next of kin
but death itself tattooed
on the dead man's arm
it meant oh God!
it meant crazy grief 
calling out kaddish after kaddish for the unknown
but all I could do was worry the unknown to death
with a teenage why why why
a lifetime later I pass 33 Union Square West
a number so loaded with inventors
artists creators hoping for bolts from the blue
it's practically branded into my skin...
Yitgadal v'yitkadash
going past 33 I walk faster
looking up
expecting no blessing

___________


OD ON THE OBIT

Everywhere a candle’s doomed
everywhere I invest in candles
yahrzeit candles sainted candles
siete potencias voodoo
holy smoke beyond smoke
everywhere ghost candles
phantom candles
spirit candles
speaking every language
under the candlepower sun
everywhere the burning
the doomed uprising
the sirens of wax disaster
everywhere the living
with hollow voices hollow eyes
everywhere posthumous bells
everywhere the subway morgue
running on schedule

I must run flee fly hide from the city
getaway getaway from steel teeth
from beasts of prey
from old prophecy biopsy
from skull bashing buildings
from haunted heights
from towers going up in smoke
turning into candle after candle
burning cancer city down
to empty lots of mother silence 
mother anger mother rage
mother buried mother burned
mother candle of candles
flame of flames dancing candles
candle dance so pretty 
dancing the hell
out of here and now
death here and now
so pretty 

___________


DYING INSTRUCTIONS

Abba
father
teacher
rabbi
without answers
you come back often
and kid around
leaving me with a smile
sometimes I wake up laughing
but sometimes you’re dead serious
telling me to die in my sleep
if I have a choice
the day you died in your sleep
in your own bed
was one of the best
you confide
better to die not knowing
than be born not knowing
it’s everything in between
all the disappeared
that Hitler hung around your neck
all that knowing
and not knowing
that makes closing your eyes
forever
a gift from some god
the same god, perhaps,
who closes his eyes
to everything

_______________


SO MANY VOICES

So many voices to choose from
in the face of pixels
which voice shall I voice today
which voice opens the door
to the mistaken delivery of flowers
come in come in
I don’t know who is getting married
or who is getting buried
but bells are ringing
I must sink into one language or another
and straighten the nail with a hammer
for you for myself
for the broken glass museum
for the self betrayals we live by
for thumbtacks in the bread
for sunlight blinding the keyhole

Let the voices escape like so many trapped birds
fearful of hungry taxidermists
let the voices of stuffed ventriloquists
await an autopsy
let the knife fall where it may
let it sharpen the cut up voices

____________


BLUE NUMBERS

Those numbers
on your forearm
you don’t try
to hide them

you raise a glass
of water to the sun
l’chaim
you’re still alive

it’s not an act
breathing isn’t a reflex
it’s a miracle

sunlight and water
and six blue digits

a tattoo you couldn’t imagine
a lottery number
you somehow won

_____________


FOR MY UNKNOWN COUSIN

If the last mile
is twenty miles from here
and the wolf waits in the forest
and a horse passes with a rider
and the rider carries the moon on his shoulders
and every living tree hides an enemy
and the wolf is at every door
and the wolf speaks German Lithuanian Polish
and a little girl crawls
out of dead mothers and fathers
piled in a pit in Ponar
it’s all a fairy tale, unbelievable
except for the little girl
who could be my cousin
a bug-eyed breathless child in rags
starved half-crazy
running to Vilna on mud roads
with a message from the dead
run stumble run, mile after mile
the planet gets darker in her mouth

I haven’t heard the last of her
she runs after me at night
pursued by a phantom forest
to tell me what I still don’t know
I haven’t seen the last of her
she runs with dried blood on her skirt
she runs beneath a dying September moon
she runs after me to tell me
what I know for sure
i still don’t know

_____________


AKIVA POEMS      
                         
One of the few who survived W.W. II in Vilna, Akiva Gershater wrote an article titled “On the other side of the ghetto” in a collection called Bleter Vegen Vilna (Pages About Vilna), 1947, published in Lodz by the Farband fun Vilna Yidden in Poilin. YIVO Institute in New York has a pre-war film in which he briefly appears.Though he lived until 1970 in Holon, Israel, I did not learn of his existence until 1979. I was told by a cousin certain facts––that he was a photographer, librarian, and, during the war, worked as a shoemaker. Many unanswered questions remain...at times I push the facts over the edge into probabilities.
I

THE ESPERANTIST

You were an Esperantist
a booster of a language
based on hope
a language invented
by another hopeful Polish Jew
but you spoke more than Esperanto
when there was no hope
was there a prayer?

I can't imagine your words in the dark
when you were hidden
by a Lithuanian scientist
until it got too dangerous
then you were out on your own

Whatever I imagine
can't be more than a shadow
of some complicated and simple truth
somehow you survived as a shoemaker
I picture you with nails
between your lips

Amazing you weren't nailed
by a customer


II

POSTWAR MISSION

After the war
you were possessed
you crisscrossed Poland
on a personal mission
gathering up Jewish children
foundlings orphans
prying them loose
from their adopters, foster parents
risk takers, simple folk
peasants or city people
saviors or bounty seekers
you used persuasion
pleas and bribes
to save the children
from Poland
and send the remnant
the saving remnant to Palestine
(you a one time Bundist
who had no use for Palestine)
you knocked on so many doors
your only regret
the doors that didn't open
the children too young
to know their own name
the children baptized
in the waters of amnesia
the children born to oblivion
the children lost and found in Poland
the children of Poland
lost to Poland
lost to the mercy of Poland
III

AN ORPHAN’S TALE

It was around Easter
you appeared at the doorway
of my Polish parents' house

Winter is over
soon there will be wild strawberries

You speak of an exodus to the Holy Land
and what my parents would have wished

I listen to your words at the door
you seem to be an emissary
from another world
the world of some other people...
my people?

You want to take me away
My Polish parents
want to take me to church

You promise me an unknown land
as if you were Moses

I'm torn
I want to go I want to stay
you can't promise me
my parents back again
why do you want me to follow you
you're not my relative
you're not my father

Where do you want me to go
why should I miss the holiday
I hear the bells of St. Stefans...
how can I belong to you

And yet...I answered the door
and you took my hand and led the way
so here I am your follower
speaking now in the tongue of Moses:
Hinéni*

               *Here am I

IV

A CHILD ASKS THE SHOEMAKER,
WHO AM I?

Who am I
I can hardly imagine
let alone remember my parents
maybe some Hanukkah candles
some Sabbath lights
I didn't know who I was
and even now sometimes
I don't know who I am

How can I abandon
those who saved me
from Passover slaughter
from the German Angel of Death
from Christmas to Christmas
from Easter to Easter

They say the angels of death were Polish
but the angels of mercy were Polish too!
I spoke Polish not Yiddish not Hebrew

Did I make the right choice
What would Solomon say?

Can anyone fill Solomon’s shoes?
A cobbler from Vilna?

You came too late for me to choose

V

YOU SAY NOTHING

What happened to your wife, your child
You never told

In the cool objective eyewitness report
published in Lodz two years after the war
you chronicled events in Vilna
without mentioning family

What you don't say speaks more
than compacted ice on the Vilya river
What you don't say
speaks a language all its own

VI

NEXT OF KIN

Uncle or cousin
I don't know
can't know
will never know
those who could make
the family connections
were killed

So I'll call you next of kin
why not

It's easy to see you
as a shadow
since I collect shadows
for a family of shadows

since I will always belong
to a shadow generation

_____________


PHOTO FROM THE WARSAW GHETTO

                  The leap of faith--
                                 after Kierkegaard


Photo poem painting print
the work of art, a burnt offering
shuts down the subject
completes the burning of the burned

the work of art, a burnt offering
of flames and biting smoke
completes the burning of the burned
in good faith bad faith lost faith

flames and biting smoke
the holy leap into the eternal
in good faith bad faith no faith
the man on fire jumps from the roof

leaping into the eternal
print painting poem photo
the man on fire jumping from the roof
the work of fire frozen in a burning leap

____________


WE ARE HERE

We are here we are here
To atone for being here
We are here we are here
To forget why we’re here

To atone for being here
To shrug our shoulders and go on
To forget why we’re here
To ask for a gift and leave it

To shrug our shoulders and go on
Taking the easy way out
To ask for a gift and leave it
Laughing at our makeshift rags

Taking the easy way out
We flip a coin
Laughing at our makeshift rags
Forgetting how we came by our choices

We flip a coin
Living by gravity’s grace
Forgetting how we came by our choices
The choice itself was gift enough

Living by gravity’s grace
To atone for being here
The choice itself was gift enough
We are here we are here



Acknowledgments (partial)

“The Wall” and “Bound for the Sambatyon” in Jewish Currents. “The Sambatyon” and “Psalm for King David” in Poetica. “Talking Jerusalem” and “Blue Numbers” in Jewish Journal. “Isaac’s Claim,” “Dividing Jerusalem,” and earlier versions of the “Akiva Poems” on Poetry Superhighway. “In the Dark Darker than a Movie” on The Art Studio Poetry Gallery. “Dividing Jerusalem," "Shovels," and “Bad Weather Blessing,” in Home Planet News. “On the Bus,” “Beersheba,”” A Novel About Haifa,” “I Hear You” in Voices Israel. “33 Union Square West” in Beyond Lament, edited by Marquerite M. Striar (Northwestern University Press). “Jars” received an Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award. “Dying Instructions” in Bittersweet Legacy, edited by Cynthia Moskowitz Brody (University Press of America) “Postwar Mission” (from Akiva series) and “Last Night’s Doubleheader” in Blood to Remember, edited by Charles Ades Fishman (Time Being Books).