LOVE AND WAR – 1992
KAREN ALKALAY-GUT
For Orit, Dalia, and Oren,
and that first night we were all sure it was gas
For Ezi, who made us go down to the shelter.
And especially for all those friends, neighbors and relatives who told me these poems
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Poems in this volume have appeared in Jewish Quarterly, Trapani Nuova, Ma’ariv, Signon, and Forward.
Between Bombardments was published in 1992 as a chapbook by Tentative Press.
SAFE ROOM
This afternoon we will be selecting
the family “safe room.” For this
I need your cooperation. We are looking for
the room in the house
with the least exposure
to potential gas attacks, a room
we can seal off with adhesive tape,
that contains a phone, a radio,
water, baking soda, canned goods,
plastic covering, and of course,
the masks. We will sit in this room
together, fighting
for our right to breathe
and we will not die
like our elders
FALL, 1990
The sharav wind, our
autumnal visitor from Babylon
leaves a fine sprinkle of dust over all.
We note it on the car,
parked under the street light
at the school where we’ve come
to get our gas masks.
On our way home, I think
of how the car will look
when we wash it.
CIVIL DEFENSE
January 1991
Here is your family
gas mask kit. It will do
good only with
the right gas. Of course,
with the other gas ‑
that infiltrates the skin ‑
you must stay inside
the nearest third story
flat you can seal. You
don’t want to go too high,
however, in case
of conventional
bombs. Because gas
is heavy, it will invade
the lower
floors and shelters.
But if gas and bombs are used together,
you have what we define as
a problem.
LOVE BEHIND GAS MASKS
Knowing that we may be dead
at any moment
raises the old cliches:
the desire to create life ‑
the golden snake
in the garden of evil
NIGHTS IN MY CITY
Tel Aviv, January 1991
In New York where I come from,
danger is within ‑
the anonymous, gratuitous knife,
the rifle randomly picking off lives.
Here in the inside I find only desire
a yearning that erupts suddenly,
or blossoms almost unaware.
And for that, Tel Aviv, you are
my ever‑hungry lover, teasing,
feeding me through the night.
And that death that falls from the sky
merely reminds me
of a world outside from which
you have vowed to be a shield.
NEIGHBORS
The morning after twelve missiles
fell on us – and we’d spent the night
in a room sealed off from the gas
with an uncertain announcer on the radio,
pinned into our masks strapped too tight
to let the blood flow in our head,
having lost all control of our bodies –
we greeted each other at the grocer’s,
and embraced each other hard
to make sure we were alive.
VIETNAM AND THE GULF
Oh, did I hate that war, heard
story after story of resistance,
and vowed never to let the mighty
defeat the weak.
It was no secret: I walked with the rest
down the crazy streets of Washington
while my parents shuddered ‑ not because
they didn’t believe in the cause, but
the youth my father spent in jail
for standing up for truth
came back to him
when he looked in my eyes.
Those who were with me then, my friends,
now have children marching the streets ‑
carrying on the tradition
History repeats itself, Kevin claims,
thinking that with my background
and the missile chips flying on my roof
I will agree that war is bad
and America must stop its mad invasion
for my good as well.
And that woman of Baghdad, fear struck,
who asks President Bush to look at the map ‑
who shows him that Baghdad is not Kuwait,
and the bombs on her house
are not falling in a battlefield
‑ in her wisdom and beauty
moves me beyond tears
But I have seen the Iraqi arsenals waiting
I have listened to the hiss
of poison spilling in the gulf
and have felt the shudder of a missile
falling on a nearby house
And I know
this war
is between
me and her.
BETWEEN BOMBARDMENTS
‑ a journal
I
Unable to move
waiting to be sprung
into action, we anticipate the sirens:
remembering the missiles of last night
targeting the people we love ‑
missing, missing, yet striking the heart:
the child choking on her vomit in her mask,
the old woman suffocating in unavoidable ignorance,
the psychotic whose nightmares came true.
II
We sit in the sealed kitchen with the dog,
the children all grown yet unschooled
in the blind hatred of aimed explosives.
We need each other, stroke each other,
the dog licks the rubber mask, nuzzles
the strange inhuman faces.
And then, when terror ebbs,
we remember the others,
reach for the phone:
are comforted
by comforting
III
False alarms spring us from our beds
fitting masks to our faces
still asleep. Someone must be enjoying
our terror, I think,
as we will learn
to enjoy theirs.
IV
The neighbors have left town
and vacation their terror
in safe Eilat. Who is left here?
the poor, the weak, and people like us,
who refuse to budge when someone
tries to blast us from home.
V
I think of Rena in Canada,
chewing her nails and screaming
when she recognizes the neighborhood of a hit
in Tel Aviv. Somehow her heart
reaches me, even here, even
hiding under the kitchen table with a quaking dog.
VI
Sleeping with a radio and a shivering dog
while my one‑eyed man
scans the skies for missiles. Somehow
this is not the front I had imagined,
and all those handsome heroes
are missing.
VII
And now we keep our infantile accounts:
those who do not phone
who do not try to reach us
from outside the target area ‑
they are not our real
friends
VIII
“Think of the children in Baghdad”
the radio announcer tells the kids,
“how frightened they must be
‑ hiding in their shelters ‑
by the unrelenting bombing.”
The news is on next ‑ celebrations
high on Palestinian roofs
that our time to die has come.
IX
The tarot cards promise
an easy bombardment
or none at all tonight
If we are wary, they say,
we will endure
I sleep
upright
X
Can anyone rejoice
in the suffering of another?
How often I have willed
another’s pain ‑ regretted
when my wish came true.
XI
My paranoid friend at least
is grateful for the war.
Let others share the terror
she lives with daily
in her private world.
XII
This night it is only the phone
that wakes me ‑ Linda
from Long Beach asking
in intimate whisper about war
arrangements, fear, sealed rooms.
And as we trail off, we hint
of other worlds, loves, the lives
we really
live.
XIII
My brother from New Jersey reminds me on the phone ‑
in the middle of a missile‑ridden night ‑
of the metal table in the kitchen ‑ the one
we would dive under when we heard
a loud noise in London
years after the blitz.
Where is that table
now?
XIV
A motorbike races down the empty street
A neighbor slams a taped glass door
The alarm goes off in a deserted house
Someone shouts my name from the other room
anything is enough to set me looking
for my mask, counting those present,
measuring my steps to shelter
XV
Welcome to the Front
Some differences: we are not an army,
just a bunch of women slapping our babies
into airtight tents, racing to the stores
for masking tape and batteries, wishing ‑
as we pass a mirror ‑ we didn’t look
so much like our mothers
just some kids off to school with backpacks
and gas masks and fresh
horrors from the night before.
just some guys trying to figure out
the safest place to hide
when it comes.
And with no commander
just the BBC radio announcer who says
Every man for himself
and
Keep your head down
XVI CUSTOM
Tonight we wait for the alarm.
Who wants to get caught in the shower
or the toilet or in the middle of love?
You say, “I’ll wash my hair after
the attack,” and I decide to put off
lacquering my nails, read
short poems about decadence instead
into the night. And it doesn’t come ‑
And we take off our shoes and lie down
fully clothed, alert, prepared
for the sudden race to the shelter.
Even towards morning while the radio clock
shines out 3 and 4, illuminating
the passing minutes, we wait,
remembering the shock of the 7:00 a.m. surprise.
Although I try to weary us with chapters from Jeremiah,
“I need my nightly missile,” you say, “to fall asleep.”
XVII
THE MOTHER OF ALL WARS
Oedipus tries to get to
the heart of all wombs
with 400 pound missiles
and we sit here, breathless
waiting for the next
thrust
XVIII
No, no sex, Eyal says, what man
can compete? This missile
gives it to all of us at once.
A war with no heroes, every man
for himself, every woman
fearing her own life,
everyone divided
from the others,
and with so many faulty options ‑
everyone divided against themselves.
Even jerking off
can’t do it.
XIX
Then the man who gives thanks
to Saddam Hussein
for improving his sex life:
with a gas mask on
he can’t see her face,
or smell her breath,
and if he blocks the filter
she actually moves
a little.
XX
We hear what we fear ‑
listen for similar noises ‑
in particular the whirring motorcycles
that zoom down empty streets
as evening falls
and we begin to anticipate the sirens.
But even our names called aloud
anticipate adrenalin,
an alarm
to seek shelter.
XXI
The old man wants to return
to his blasted town.
Emphysemal, wheezing, unable
to wear a mask or even
hide his face from a blast,
he must stay in the country with his daughter
like a good boy
until the coast is clear.
But everybody wants to die
in his own bed, in his own
stink, surrounded by
his very own toys.
XXII
Mike and his wife can’t stop
fighting. Why does she leave
him every night to sleep
in some distant village?
Why can’t she trust her husband
to protect her?
Our phone conversation is interrupted by a siren.
Two hours later, back in place, he calls to gloat:
the missile fell near her village.
XXIII
Instead of his leash
the dog brings my mask
to remind me of his walk.
Will we ever return
to normal?
XXIV
Nights without bombs are suddenly empty
Still alert, waiting at home ‑
remembering passionate friends in cafes
involved in each other
without thought of the skies
XXV
“This is going to make a lot of crazy people,”
my dear aunt Frieda whispers, and I remember
how she weeps when she speaks of the first world war.
Even if nothing more happens here
it will never be the same ‑
Then Ziggy, who believes in the force of character
over history, goes through his stories of Siberia,
and the ignorance of the individual to the fact of “holocaust”
in the face of daily travail. We recall our friend
who ran out to the streets last week during an attack,
the pain of lost love so much greater than her fear
of annihilation. “How fine it is to talk,” Dickinson
suddenly intervenes in our conversation as if this
were a conference call, “How wonderful the news is!
Not Bismarck, but ourselves!” “Hey, Emily,” I answer,
“you’ve never been bombed.”
XXVI
My sanest friend is sure a target
has been painted on her chest,
that the Iraqis with eagle vision
seek her out each night,
each missile aimed at her,
and only standard deviation
keeps her alive.
XXVII
Some people terrified for their lives cut
themselves off in times like these. Even I
spent hours in my room, unable to face the rest
of the family those first days of war. Weeks
later we meet our friends like wary dogs,
sniffing from behind, asking about sex
and digestion before we can kiss and smell
the sweat that emerges now from deep inside.
XXVIII
“The next missile will be chemical,”
my gay friend predicts, “But who knows?
Maybe Zyclon 2 cures AIDS.” For weeks
he has been alone, his lover torn from his arms,
hiding from him and the anguish outside wrapped
in rubber.
XXIX
And the voice of that man that always warms me more
than I expect is frost‑bit now. I hear his control
on the answering machine and long
to rub that voice with ice the way my brother
would rub my hands reviving the blood
after long afternoons playing in the snow.
XXX
“Man like the generous vine supported lives,
The strength he gains is from the embrace he gives.”
How often Pope’s words return to me ‑ that lonely outcast
who knew how much was needed and how much it cost.
XXXI
And now we all meet again, old friends divided by fear
for three weeks. Our talk is all of patriots,
our need to flee danger, silent leaders,
values that would direct our daily lives
had we been told what was right.
“The only voice we hear that soothes us,”
says a hennaed woman with a china cup
delicately balanced on her lap,
“is of the army spokesman, Nachman Shai.”
“If you think he was the gift of sanity,”
I rumble in my black rebellious way,
“what does it tell you about yourself
that you bought the image he sold
when he knew and you knew
he didn’t know what the hell
was going on.”
But even this provocation can’t divide us now.
She’s not dumb. She nods and leans forward,
“We take it where we get it, right?” And I
grab her hand.
XXXII
The morning after a three-alarm night
I smell my mother in my bath
that acrid bloody woman‑smell
filling the bath and becoming,
suddenly, sensual ‑ a sign
the womb continues its tasks
when all outside is destruction.
XXXIII
Little Smadar gets an evening pep talk
from her British mother, about her fear
of extinction. “We must show that nasty man
we don’t care. That is the part we Israelis play
in this war.”
And in the morning Smadar asks, tentatively:
“Do you think Saddam will notice
that one little girl is frightened?”
XXXIV
How I need to make plans for the future now!
If I were any younger, I’d be pregnant,
the way my mother was, defiantly, in the Blitz.
Just to believe that something good might emerge
from this
would be sufficient.
XXXV
“Who do you think you are?
A post‑modern Anna Frank?”
a friend remarks when he sees
I keep a journal. She
died when I was born,
I reply, why not continue
the keeping of accounts.
XXXVI
The morning after a two SCUD night
nobody keeps their appointments.
How unfeeling to think we could
live an “emergency routine,”
as if danger would not change
our entire scale of concerns.
XXXVII
Fluttering between war and Purim,
the little fairy princess watches
the latest SCUD victims evacuated
from the Army compound in Riyadh,
takes both her masks, waves
her magic wand, and goes off
to school.
XXXVIII
And now it seems it will go away, this
threat that has hung over our skies
like Joe Bl*$*#&%#
cloud for so many days ‑
thirty nine missiles. But my daughter just now
is engulfed in terror for the first time,
seeing how she has changed
irrevocably
XXXIX
So we begin to plan
our adult Purim costumes
as if back into the swing of things.
Diane paints formulas on her face
to parade with me down the street
as a chemical warhead, and I can’t think
of how to conceal what I have become
even though I expect to drink
until I can’t distinguish
TRANSFORMATIONS
Tel Aviv, February 1991
To become ravenous
for war almost
at all costs
to fear extinction
so much, all means
become valid
all others become
means to enhance
or endanger
that single life.
Mine.
Demands on Love
increase
like clamoring
of babies
helpless
in their cribs
Know, my dear,
it is my weakness
makes me wanton
not our love
these nights
we sit
waiting
for our food
our fate
our end.
- BAGHDAD
We have become
a primitive people again
the lady in the line for water
says to the camera. Thanks
to you we now spend our days
foraging for flour, tea,
our nights
in a dark
illuminated
by the technical splendors
of your remarkable munitions.
“Fear and I Were Born Twins”
‑T. Hobbes
And mother dressed us the same
so no one could tell us apart
And some days I come out
and some days she
and some days both of us walk
together so close we can change
places without missing
a step
and I become my fear
and fear is me
SHELLSHOCK ‑ March 1991
I
The psychiatrist measures my cleaning lady’s tremor ‑
the questionnaire we fill out for her
examines how she feels now, that a roof has been built
over her house again, and the shards of missile
pried from her bedstead. “Darling, we were wed
forty years ago in this house,” she breaks through
our formal drone. “How I trusted
the lintels of this door, then, was sure
this man, this structure, would keep me safe
from wars, like the one I was born to.”
II
I throw the radio across the room when
someone says he wants to sleep
in a bed made of flowers,
as if the eternal aroma
could cure that pure truth
that flowers and all
can explode
III
This is a New Wave
of terror, coming up
from places we try
to bury, like images
in poems that make
patterns we learn
to anticipate, watch for
while we long for
surprise.
IV
So I am supposed to go back to old loves now
as if we’ve won the mother
of all wars and now can breathe
the freshest of airs as if it had not
been soiled forever by a match
to the middle of the earth.
V
How I thought I’d love you
all new once this
cruel war is over
your skin as pure
as a newborn with the cleft
above your lip the angel
gave you to forget
all knowledge
of the world.
Now we lie naked together
while I invent the illnesses
I fought off like SCUDs
when my body was on alert.
VI
What to do with this nameless pain?
“Let it grow,” you say, a voice
from far away. Eric, I say wearily, you
were talking about love, not
despair. Then I hear it
more clearly as “Let it go.”
Either way its the same ‑
following one cliché or another
back to a place acceptable
to a world that should have learned
to transcend clichés
VII
Lennore comes to my sickbed.
It must be the high fever the aspirin
cannot relieve, and the lonely
afternoon at what should have been her birthday
that brings my dead friend here, now,
dressed like Cinderella in teal blue velvet,
a black ribbon at her throat, with those eyes
that loved and love beyond all the agonies
she endured from the day I knew her. “Keep
loving,” she whispers, waving
what appears to be a magic wand.
“In hate, in war, even in this passive state
you call shell shock, even when others
can’t give it back just yet.
Take it
easy, make it
a better
place.”
I bury my face in her dress, wet the magic velvet
with inappropriate tears. Even in my imaginings
I cannot construe optimism as anything but
fairy tales with fairy princesses who must
disappear at the stroke of midnight.
PARDESS*
The floor of the orchard is green,
orange and yellow. All the fruit
that wasn’t picked
in time, victims
of the war, slowly returns
to the earth ‑ emitting
an acrid smell like all
the days we have wasted
waiting for missiles
to shatter our windows
our lives.
* The Hebrew word for orchard is the derivation of the word “paradise.”
BIOGRAPHY
Born at the end of the Blitz in London, England, to parents who escaped the Holocaust by a series of miracles, Karen Alkalay-Gut was brought up in the United States and moved to Tel Aviv in 1972, where she lives with her husband, Ezi. A retired professor at Tel Aviv University, she is the author of scholarly works as well as countless books of poetry. Her latest books of poetry are Hanging Around the House in English and Yerusha in Yiddish and Hebrew.