the Gulf War and how are you feeling—like the sky

can betray you, and the boy next door can blow up your world

with dum-dums. Fifty years ago you learned

there are places to escape from and places to escape to,

and people to hate and people to embrace as long-lost cousins.

And now it’s clear that was all an old-fashioned dream

of certainty, like hiding under the school desk with your arms

protecting your nape from nuclear attack.

Give me an ideal scenario—what’s the best possible outcome--

I want to but cannot answer straight, “Surely some revelation is at hand...

like maybe when Uziah died and it seemed like

nothing could save us...” And then it comes to me in one of those

simple sentences in the Bible “..and I beheld the Lord seated on his throne”

that it doesn’t take much more to receive a vision than dire need.

Now give me the worst scenario—

and that picture appears

before my eyes

and the doorposts resound

This witness could not be sure

he was seeing bodies or mannequins

flying in the air, naked, dismembered.

That witness saw the terrorist, standing

for a while, on the corner, carrying parcels,

as if he was coming home from shopping

on the way to provide for his family.

Someone reports that his head, whole,

is still resting under the cash machine.

Surely there are more

important things to set straight

when children are still

missing, when parts of them

are still missing (we do not know

what belongs to whom) and the smell of

burnt blood still fills the air.

Phones—the lines we locals

connect through, like a web

of umbilical cords—the lines

are busy now. How do I know

our own mother was not out

gingerly exercising her new hip,

or our niece had decided not to give

her baby some air? And even

my best friend’s cellular doesn’t respond.

I look past the rubble for faces in the crowds on TV:

each familiar survivor of yet another catastrophe,

reminds me of more who are still missing, unaccounted for.

And though I am miles away

I smell it in the air, the explosion

of peace.

A Lieutenant General

killed himself today

by driving through

the road block

at the Gaza checkpoint.

What a way to go—

demeaned by terminal disease—

to make it seem that an old enemy

betrays you instead

Everyone I know just missed

being blown up at five to four on Monday.

Every one I know just turned

the corner and looked back

when it blew up, or took

a different route that day

and were a few blocks

off. Only a few

were supposed to be elsewhere

but missed the bus, or the light, or their luck,

and wound up all over Dizengoff.

The moment before he blew himself

and Dizengoff up, he paused

in the middle of the street

and I imagine that his mind

filled with endless desire—

Paradise, Dizengoff, the thirst

he must have felt after a long day’s ride

in the bottom of the van, a girl he once saw

and wanted to have, a self-portrait in oil

that showed promise and could have been

so much better, Paradise, Dizengoff

Sunday, June 2, 1996

Loved by half this land

with all its heart, you start

today and wonder that

the other half did not come through.

“I just want to take my bags

and get out of here,” Leah

said, and I thought of you

and how when I saw you once

in your office I thought – the perfect man

in his proper place –

Suddenly I fear you will think

it was all a waste, the dreams

spattered on the pavement

like the blood of your mate,

and that – as well as the bullet –

the assassin cast

the deciding vote

But a dream is not worth less –

that it cannot be redeemed

at this very moment – surely

some things that don’t happen

stay in our hearts as much

as those that do – surely

we must plan that dreams

can, as they have before,

come true.

I

Early in the evening you said

there are too many poems already in this world

I agreed

and fell silent.

But then you began to sigh

endlessly and we saw

there was a need

for at least one

more

II

In the cafés the new musicians

have left off singing and the old ones

repeat anachronistic irrelevancies

for nostalgia’s sake.

In movie theaters

we watch listlessly whatever

French or American prize committees

tell us suits the world’s need,

while a still small voice

curses our poverty and impotence.

We find no way

to turn that voice

to something

of use to us.

“Leave this land,” says

the latest rock star, tiny and sad,

trying to steer his fans

from agonies of assassinations

and the aftermath

of triumphant self-seekers

filled with passionate intensity.

“I mean it.”

“Ah, you trust them

to take care of it for you?”

“Can you imagine a world

without a homeland?”

“Home is,” said Frost’s cruel farmer,

“when you have to go there

they have to take you in.”

But we sit at home and dream

of somewhere else, forgetting

the wandering of generations.

III

In the cafés the new musicians

have left off singing and the old ones

repeat anachronistic irrelevancies

for nostalgia’s sake.

But we are sitting in a place called

“Local Produce,” drinking melon juice

and eating a cinnamon babka redolent

of loving grandmothers, while easy street cats—

sated from living near breezy people—

wander in and out of the sidewalk tables

unperturbed by our enormous dog.

And the music

grabs me by the heart and teaches

old lessons

“I have

no other country,” the clear

acappella of Corinne Allal

reminds me. “I will not

until it opens its eyes.”

Then, as if the man who plays the tapes

in “Local Produce” knows the agenda,

the next song is “Mother Earth.”

The indifferent cats of “Local Produce”

wander in and out

among the chairs, the coffee-drinkers

and their dogs.

Strange, but in their steadfast serenity

they convince even their worst enemies

it is best to enjoy the sidewalk as one.

IV

Later in the eveni

we come to an exhibit of junk lighting –

wire sculptures of floor lamps with lightbulbs woven in,

lampshades made from sixty watt cartons –

in an old warehouse filled with improvisation—jazz

like I have been needing to hear since the elections –

free, defiant, persistent, and with no overhead.

This is a day we spend making love,

while prayers from nearby synagogues

drift through the silent air

into our window, the voices changing

as the wind changes, and as the Day

of Atonement proceeds from pleading

to acceptance at the sealing of fates.

“Open for me the gates of righteousness,”

my neighbors chant in unison as I

move a strategic pillow to the middle of the bed,

wishing I could be in two places at once

wishing I could be two people at once

wishing there could be two times simultaneously,

praying at once for immersion and perspective.

My right hand

has its own cunning

remembers those bones

it wants to remember

forgets the stones

it wants to forget

Angry with ourselves and the world

we drive to the neighborhood where you were born

and as I keep up a steady bickering

we park right next to the stores on Herzl Street

where the homemade cupboards are displayed.

“If you will it, it is not a dream,” he said,

as if a whole people could force their will on the world;

and now I demand a piece of furniture that is not

really necessary except to hide things in.

It would be easier if we could throw everything out --

the chances we’ll need old jeans and diaries

are slim at best, and all this junk just slows down

Jews that should get used to wandering again.

“Maybe someday the kids will come home, and need

to reconnect to their past,” I muse.

As always you try to go along with me,

but when it comes to deciding where the shelves will be,

your heart suddenly grows fierce

and you come down hard, as if I’d been the one

who ruined the dream that should have been our inheritance.

There is something great about the normal life –

the even life we try to live in this weird homeland

even while garbage cans explode in the street

and sober bespectacled young men regret

they didn’t manage to kill anyone in their spree.

Put aside the irrelevant in our ideologies

and we are left with that glorious possibility –

being simple and different peoples

living with our olive trees, the desert

that breeds monotheism, the sea.

All the history books, all

the explanations, all the

whole load of sensitive Reasons

do not add up to

the hunger, the certainty

of that hunger, the fact

that I do not move from this place

even when fire

drops from the sky

even when my dreams

blow up like suspicious parcels

left only for a moment

on a normal afternoon

home"><