i’m doing this evening on home and objects on June 6 in honor of my new book in Hebrew “Hanging Poems,” and today as a friend asked me if I had thought of leaving Israel, and I said no, it was a moment of truth for me.  I thought of a poem of Yehuda Amichai that I translated but never published – a poem that stayed in my heart.

A person leaves home

And home doesn’t leave the person

who remains

on the walls and on

whatever hangs on them

and on the carefully closed

rooms and doors.

Or it is that the house

expands and goes on

to become the roads

where the person goes

who leaves that home.

Here we are, moving from place to place in the US, but Ezi keeps the app on that alerts us about rocket attacks in Israel.  It’s not a loud sound, and the people around us don’t hear it, but we do.  Last night, when I couldn’t sleep because my feet were aching terribly from sitting scrunched up in the car all day, the alarm kept going off.  And I kept thinking about the joy I felt when I first discovered that Israel was not a theoretical concept but a real homeland.  I even understand the longing of  the Palestinians  for a  homeland even though they themselves never lived there.  It stays in your bones, that home.  

The rocket warnings are sounding now.  someone doesn’t want me to have a home.