LIKE COUPLES IN THE MOVIES............................................................................... 2
DEFECTION.................................................................................................................. 3
MAGDALA.................................................................................................................... 4
IF IT’S TRUE THAT LAKES ALSO AGE...................................................................... 5
ZIONISM....................................................................................................................... 6
BEFORE LIFE STARTS TO QUIVER........................................................................... 8
HOLY TOPOGRAPHY.................................................................................................. 9
And the sea.................................................................................................................... 10
RACHEL’S GARDEN................................................................................................... 11
FROM A CERTAIN POINT OF VIEW........................................................................ 12
FISHERWOMAN......................................................................................................... 13
KINNERET, SPRING................................................................................................... 14
THE MOUNTAIN’S FINEST HOUR........................................................................... 15
BOUGINVILLEA.......................................................................................................... 16
THE LAND OF FIRES AND RILLS............................................................................. 17
PROMENADE.............................................................................................................. 18
GOOD FRIDAY............................................................................................................ 19
AGI................................................................................................................................ 22
MARY'S WELL............................................................................................................ 24
EIN KEREM................................................................................................................. 26
Like couples in the movies, who suddenly begin—
after first love-making—to tell the tales
of their childhood
as a hint to the viewers
that here begins their love story—
this land tells me of its youth;
shares with me dreams and nightmares, facts and myths,
reveals who she had
before me.
And I am just a feral child
(who stayed in the third grade of Dov Hoz School
when everyone else went to Yale)
who still enters everything into the illustrated notebook
(very good in Botany)
where I still learn “Homeland;”
press spring flowers,
glue in summer thorns,
write in waves in the tongue of the sea
all the folded blue
all the shaded translucence,
the voice of the breadth of inclusive silence
the murmurings of the heart.
My father died during this war—
I wasn’t there.
My city escaped death in this war—
I wasn’t there.
Dark hours that occur once in a lifetime
drifted away
like clouds devoid of rain
I haven’t mourned my father yet
nor done my share
in the war effort—
On banks of misty pools
I lie in wait
to see the fish rise from
half-meter depths
and thus everything becomes softened
beyond care,
and the heart does not conceive.
From here all of Gennesaret is just a housing-project—
not the paradise of an excited pilgrim:
“The garden of the World”—Rudolf de Haas.
But in the plain from Migdal to the sea,
for those who cannot do without enchantment
—each palm tree is a flag! Each Eucalyptus a face!
And almost always some miraculous purple
of royal bouganvillea or of some unknown tree
adds a dimension to the cultivated land,
conceals the superfluous,
slips the hand of the future into that of the past.
I see burdened Brenner
after living here
leaving lighthearted
to his death
in Jaffa
And Rachel
on a visit
having walked all the way from her farm school
(so they say)
sitting on a well
nineteen, intense, with all her friends around
dreaming and drinking in the sea
like a camel, desert bound.
If it’s true that lakes also age
it doesn’t show on you
low skies of mine, my little infinity,
bright eye of the other side of the world,
black mud where the bourri-fish sleep
If it’s true that lakes also age—
and you are “a relatively young phenomenon
with an accelerated process of deterioration”
as I read in The Land of Naphtali,
Then I’ll re-dig for you the Hula sea
(to kidney-sift your waters once again).
I’ll stop up the outer pipes
un-cork the inner springs!
Give the salt back to the water!
When I was a child, I used to practice against fear
by night-runs home from scouts’ headquarters.
Passing the Christian (or was it Moslem?) graveyard
I talked to myself—
the words carrying me away
to a distant place
where no stone angel trembled behind the wall
where no grave gaped on a crumbling cliff
trying to have its say.
When I was a Bat Mitzvah, on the kibbutz,
the hills of Hamadia
disclosed the pattern of my life
sending me
back to Jaffa.
Though here, among the fish ponds,
dressed in a skirt of colored raffia,
perched on a tin boat,
I was the Queen of Africa;
The world unfolded.
When I was a girl, the Youth Movement
took me on a trip
from sea to sea.
I still haven’t returned.
I’m still crossing the water
from the steep lawn of the Jewish Agency school
to the Arab ovens of Tabha.
On the Mount of Beatitude I climb on and on.
I sing the old Hebrew folk songs with the crowd;
I hobnob with both Jesus and Arthur Rupin.
Brenner and Gordon are still fighting over me
(I lean toward the older man)
An Arab is murdering me;
I go to a local ruin as to a previous life.
I’m born again!
To the cemetery on the sea
I go on pilgrimage,
and wizard-wise, with “Open Sesame,”
produce from Rachel’s gravestead
a damp, white book,
from which I read aloud to my children
(before they are too big to care)
about “the lilac of the evening air.”
NOTES
Brenner: Haim Brenner, pessimistic author and leader of the generation of founders, was murdered by Arabs in Jaffa.
Rachel: Rachel Blaustein, the “national poet” of the founding generation of settlers, who died at age 39 of tuberculosis, is known for her great love of this area.
Gordon: Arthur David Gordon, optimistic leader of the founding generation.
Hamadia: a kibbutz in the Jordan Valley.
Tabha: where Jesus performed the miracle of the fishes.
Before life starts to quiver
like a fish with his intestines out
but not his life—
his life is still within—
there is more life to him—
there is a whole sea that is still his own—
the depths are still deep
from him
alone
Before life starts to quiver
let’s linger a bit more
facing radiant scales
Though the knife blade is reflected there
as well.
High balcony. Vine serpent
in the blue latticework.
A cluster-testicle hangs
and fills.
The radiance of the jacaranda. The citrus grove
reaches the water line. A boat makes
circles on round sea—
or loaves. The stain of fire and wheat on
mottled mountains.
The congestion of wind changing the water’s hue
from metal-grey to kingfisher blue!
A solid
silence.
And everything one craves is in eating distance.
And the sea
as always
is a miracle
that does not dry up
Blue not deep not strong
that still overpowers
my days
Again I have come
placed myself before it
awaiting its murmuring
The mount of the dead is fresh
and the date garden is old
the bunches wrapped like a creation of Christo,
they are maidens from the farm draped in white
they are chandeliers dropping
from the arches of the chamber
between the columns of trees with palms upraised
perhaps cupping their cheeks
or clapping
or holding up the sky
From a certain perspective the sea is a river
that passes
and remains.
From a certain point of view the sea is a scroll
that inscribes
and erases.
In a certain light everything is stage setting:
Kinneret,
The Galilee…
It seems that any minute any minute any minute
It will all begin!
And then it gets dark.
No screen opens.
Only you remain there alone intoxicated,
asking for another glass
in the place where only
water
filled a pit.
The poems I haven’t written yet
The poems I haven’t pulled from the water
play with the fish and the crabs
let the Jordan pass through them,
become plankton for other fish
and then gather themselves,
frightened by a big fish
they run for their lives
right into my extended soul
my holey work
my embroidery
my netting of feeling and fear,
my deep-water net, approved by the maritime board –
for on these waters is my livelihood
*
The sea is full to the brim
The sea overflows its legends
The pomegranate tree
that gives no scent
abounds with smeared kisses
That maddening blossoming
is my sanity insurance
*
There is no way to measuring the force of flowering,
But burns have their degrees
And there are degrees of earthquakes
Here
the Richter scale
and Jacob’s ladder
begin in the same stone
The mountain’s finest hour
is
about fifteen minutes long
when all the breath of ‘there’
when all the depth of ‘blue’
illuminate themselves from within
bring themselves into the light!
After that they
go back to being
extinguished
volcanoes, mountains
of blackness, basalt
the hardened lava from the heart of the earth.
Tree of scarlet poultices
on the inflamed spots of being.
What rottenness
What disintegration within the brown damp,
What convolutions of root nets
spread to trawl fish
from the underground stream
all in order to produce
the innocent flowering
in order to raise
your joyous flags
to the top of the pole
of the lifesavers’ post
along the angry sea.
What a fountain of prayers;
a green flame from the dragon’s mouth
invisible-yet-felt
a swing for the hummingbird;
a balancing point
that makes the hours
entire worlds
to be waived!
Tree of scarlet poultices
on the inflamed spots of
being.
What rottenness
What disintegration within the brown damp,
What convolutions of root nets
spread to trawl
fish from the underground stream
all in order to produce
the innocent flowering
in order to raise your joyous flags
to the top of the pole of the lifesavers’ post
along the angry sea.
What a fountain of prayers;
a green flame from the dragon’s mouth
invisible-yet-felt
a swing for the hummingbird;
a balancing point that makes the hours
entire worlds to be waved!
The wisdom of the heart says: this is the land.
From this you must distill love or ennui.
The madness of the heart says: go climb the myrrh mountain,
descend the honeyed valley.
Whether they are only bewitchment or only a drug,
whether vapor from a crevice and not the voice from the firmament.
My heart’s wisdom,
magnifying glass of little miracles,
sieve sifting the grass
from all the plains of garbage,
bring me back again in that old jeep
and take the dusty date tree
between the ruins of the Syrian camp
above the falling blast of breaking waters…
the taste of roasted sweetness
of the land of fires and shallow rills,
the smell of water in the middle of the desert,
will return me
to my borders
before I cross.
A.
Here is the sea
where the boats called
for names of ancient cities
(and not women like in Jaffa)
cities of basalt dreams:
Magdala Arbla Kurazin
Here is the sea
where each boat
is the boat of Jesus
and every amazed glance
walks on the waters
B
What luck that the “Senor” synagogue
embarrasses the promenade,
and doesn’t let the pedestrian walkway pass smoothly,
complicates the accordion playing
of the new immigrant from the absorption center
who for a plugged nickle
transforms Rakah to Paris
C
In the Abulafiah synagogue
They fry fish and read the papers;
A newspaper named after a prayer
and fish that have mad history
And the “Jordan River” is a hotel
with a transparent elevator
which will soon take off from its stand
trailing with it like a train
the whole pedestrian walkway and the marina and the pizza parlors and the pubs and the frozen yogurt …
and I will be able to return to its proper place
my black city,
to nail it to reality
with the tack of the Al-Bakhri Mosque
and the tack of the Mosque of Omar.
After Good Friday
in the Old City
(taking calculated risks)
a Jewish woman
in Intifada times
with a friend my age
and temperament, a nun
of the same strange order
by which we have been called
to walk the Via Dolorosa
instead of sitting in a cafe
After the tiny shrines
in every station of His agony;
wounds that re-open here each year;
stigmata of the lost alley
amid Passover and Pesach
and the "Day of the Land"
After the legions of Ramadan pilgrims
checked and sorted out
by a little soldier - My child! clever child
(Do not dream now!) You knew what you have to add
to the innocence in which I brought you up
so you can stand firmly now on these dams
and direct the rites of sorting
those who come to pray
from those who come to kill
(Do not dream! "The dream always comes after
the child is rocked to sleep by Mother").
And my son
sends forth a flood
of white-apparelled old men
to Mount Moriah...
Do not dream now! Do not say a word:
(Hebrew here is an incriminating tongue).
Just pursue your way to Calvary
trailing the cross-bearers' prosecutions, the mystery plays,
of schools, churches, and monasteries,
in a muddle of incense, candles and hymns,
the spray of perfume and tears on the stone
that may have held Him
but has surely held
the deep fervor of old Greek ladies
year after year -
hundreds of years.
After the stories, the thinking and the questions
after the blood in the cup, after the thorn
in the forehead
after the oblong beam
of light
that managed to transform
the motes of dust to pale blue
in the hollow of a dark chapel -
I want to sprinkle sugar
on a crescent cookie
I want to iron
mountains!
The whole colorful Carmel peak
composed of clothes of a man and woman
In my kitchen porch,
In the setting day.
Agi,
a woman with a blue number,
knew Death personally,
was almost His,
but He, suddenly, got up
and left.
Since then
nothing makes her weep
or laugh deeply
All things come and go like seasons;
The cows give milk, the cows dry up, are sold,
her man bends with time . . .
the cancer in her breast is also no great bother.
On outings to Tel Aviv
for radiation,
she airs her mind -
sees people who are not
her housewife neighbors,
hears things that are not
the mooing of the cows . . .
When she returns
and cuts through my garden,
there is about her
that light touch of
what she must have been once
but also
the heavy grasp.
2.
You said you had
a little girl named Esther
You had a bush of hair
like clouds
and your face ( now I know it )
was rain
that poured upon our lifted faces -
it still does.
You stood above us for hours,
waiting for the
rainbow.
Now Spring has come
even to this place.
He doesn't fear your stares
or sense the foul smells.
He brings you flowers!
Here, at this fountain
where a Russian monk
finally found Truth
by candle-light
and in Her honor built
a mountain-embracing monastery,
hosts of Hassids are now chanting
of "His eternal grace"
while tolling bells baptize you
in their pools of sound.
O tiny, sunny square of this "Town of God,"
Montana, Bait-Hakerem,
Ras-A-Rab,
they all gather here
arriving in hosts
to stain you with hot tar
Hassids and Monks form
the same black
on clear Judean stone,
nearby a trickle
so small for this big tide
it barely yields its murmur
to the din –
Amused to tears.
Then it remembers that, in fact,
they always used to come
with empty vessels
and brimming hearts
filling the first
and emptying the last,
then stepping back
as if something of weight
has come to pass.
But what could have befallen here
save drops of water on dry earth
What else?
Me and my Arab friend
(who strolled over from the medical school
for bread from the village store)
watch the whole scene
sitting on the fence
(along with the policeman)
and fling about light words smooth as water
on subjects heavy as earth.
(written during the Gulf War)
Alarms and church bells –
brightness of almond blossoms, darkness
of cypresses, and tops of stone-pines leaning
on thick ramparts
like sacks on backs of animals,
upon a rocky ground,
around a liquid
core.
The terror is slight.
The sealed-room of the convent
is 2000 years old.
And everything that ever was alive
between its walls
lives this moment
as one more ring
of the same pebble
in one and the same pond.