by Chana Bloch
On top of the hay wagon.
Now I live in a city of hills where it gets dark
before it does at the seashore.
And I live in a house that gets dark before it does outside.
But in my heart, where I really live,
it’s always dark.
Perhaps one day there will finally be light
as in the far North.
15
Even my loves are measured by wars.
I say, “That happened after
the Second World War.” “We met
a day before the Six Day War.” I would never say
“before the peace of ’45-’48” or “in the middle of
the peace of ’56-’67.”
Yet the knowledge of peace
makes its way from one place to another
like children’s games,
which are so much alike everywhere you go.
17
An Armenian funeral on Mount Zion: the coffin
is carried, wobbling, like a bit of straw
in a procession of black ants.
The widow’s black purse gleams
in the setting sun. That you are
Our Father, that he is Our King, that we have
no Savior in our time.
18
The graves in Jerusalem are the openings
of deep tunnels
on the day of the ground-breaking ceremonies.
After that they stop digging.
The gravestones are magnificent
cornerstones of buildings
that will never get built.
21
Jerusalem’s a place where everyone remembers
he’s forgotten something
but doesn’t remember what it is.
And for the sake of remembering
I wear my father’s face over mine.
This is the city where my dream containers fill up
like a diver’s oxygen tanks.
Its holiness
sometimes turns into love.
And the questions that are asked in these hills
are the same as they’ve always been: “Have you
seen my sheep?” “Have you seen
my shepherd?”
And the door of my house stands open
like a tomb
where someone was resurrected.
22
This is the end of the landscape. Among blocks
of concrete and rusting iron
there’s a fig tree with heavy fruit
but even kids don’t come around to pick it.
This is the end of the landscape.
Inside the carcass of a mattress rotting in the field
the springs stay put, like souls.
The house I lived in gets farther and farther away
but a light was left burning in the window
so that people would only see and not hear.
This is the end.
And how to start loving again is like the problem
of architects in an old city: how to build
where houses once stood, so it will look like
those days, yet also like now.
23
Nineteen years this city was divided—
the lifetime of a young man who might have fallen in the war.
I long for the serenity and for the old longing.
Crazy people would cross through the fence that divided it,
enemies breached it,
lovers went up to it, testing,
like circus acrobats who try out the net
before they dare to jump.
The patches of no-man’s-land were like placid bays.
Longing floated overhead in the sky
like ships whose anchors stuck deep in us, and sweetly
ached.
27
The toys of an only God
who is rich and spoiled:
dolls, angels, marbles, a bell and glass,
golden wheels, bundles of flutes.
But the toys of the poor children
of a poor God: prayer rattles, dry
palm branches, matzohs. And at the very most,
a Havdoleh box for cheap spices
with a little flag on top that goes round and round.
29
People travel a long distance to be able to say: This reminds me
of some other place.
It’s like that time, it’s similar. But
I knew a man who traveled all the way to New York
to commit suicide. He claimed that the buildings in Jerusalem
were too low and besides, everyone knew him here.
I remember him fondly because once
he called me out of the classroom in the middle of a lesson:
“A beautiful woman is waiting for you outside, in the garden.”
And he quieted the noisy children.
Whenever I think about the woman and the garden,
I remember him up on that high roof:
the loneliness of his death, the death of his loneliness.
31
Four synagogues are entrenched together
against bombardments from God.
In the first, Holy Arks with candies hidden away,
and sweet preserves of God’s Word from a blessed season,
all in beautiful jars, for children
to stand on tiptoe and lick with a golden finger.
Also ovens with cholent and oatmeal running over.
In the second, four strong pillars for an everlasting
wedding canopy. The result
of love.
The third, an old Turkish bathhouse with small, high windows
and Torah scrolls, naked
or taking off their robes. Answer, answer us
in clouds of vapor and white steam,
Answer, answer till the senses swoon.
The fourth:
part of God’s bequest.
Yes. These are thy tents, O Jacob, in profundis.
“From here we begin the descent. Please remain seated
till the signal lights up.” As on a flight
that will never land.
32
In the lot through which lovers took a short-cut
the Rumanian circus is parked.
Clouds mill around the setting sun like refugees
in a strange city of refuge.
A man of the twentieth century
casts a dark purple Byzantine shadow.
A woman shades her eyes with a raised hand, ringing
a bunch of lifted grapes.
Pain found me in the street
and whistled to his companions: Here’s another one.
New houses flooded my father’s grave
like tank columns. It stayed proud and didn’t surrender.
A man who has no portion in the world to come
sleeps with a woman who does.
Their lust is reinforced by the self-restraint
in the monasteries all around.
This house has love carved on its gate
and loneliness for supports.
“From the roof you can see” or “Next year”—
between these two a whole life goes on.
In this city, the water level
is always beneath the level of the dead.
34
Let the memorial hill remember instead of me,
that’s what it’s here for. Let the park in-memory-of remember,
let the street that’s-named-for remember,
let the famous building remember,
let the synagogue that’s named after God remember,
let the rolling Torah scroll remember, let the prayer
for the memory of the dead remember. Let the flags remember,
those multicolored shrouds of history: the bodies they wrapped
have long since turned to dust. Let the dust remember.
Let the dung remember
at the gate. Let the afterbirth remember.
Let the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens
eat and remember.
Let all of them remember so that I can rest.
35
In the summer whole peoples visit one another
to spy out each other’s nakedness.
Hebrew and Arabic, that are like guttural
stones, like sand on the palate,
grow soft as oil for the tourists’ sake.
Jihad and Jehovah’s wars
burst like ripe figs.
Jerusalem’s water pipes protrude
like the veins and sinews of a tired old man.
Its houses are like the teeth of a lower jaw,
grinding in vain
because the skies above it are empty.
Perhaps Jerusalem is a dead city
with people
swarming like maggots.
Sometimes they celebrate.
36
Every evening God takes his glittery merchandise
out of the shop window:
chariot works, tablets of law, fancy beads,
crosses and gleaming bells,
and puts them back into dark boxes
inside, and closes the shutter: “Another day,
and still not one prophet has come to buy.”
37
All these stones, all this sorrow, all this
light, rubble of night hours and noon-dust,
all the twisted pipework of sanctity,
Wailing Wall, towers, rusty halos,
all the prophecies that—like old men—couldn’t hold it in,
all the sweaty angels’ wings,
all the stinking candles, all the prosthetic tourism,
dung of deliverance, bliss-and-balls,
dregs of nothingness, bomb and time.
All this dust, all these bones
in the process of resurrection and of the wind,
all this love, all these
stones, all this sorrow—
Go heap them into the valleys all around
so Jerusalem will be level
for my sweet airplane
that will come and carry me up.
Songs of Continuity
Songs of continuity, land mines and graves:
that’s what turns up when you’re making a house or a road.
Then come the black crow people from Meah She’arim
with their bitter screeching: “A body! A dead body!”
Then the young soldiers with their hands
of the night before,
dismantling iron to decipher death.
So come on, let’s not build a house, let’s not pave a road!
Let’s make a house that’s folded inside the heart,
a road wound up on a spool in the soul, deep inside,
and we won’t die, ever.
People here live inside prophecies that have come true
as inside a heavy cloud that didn’t disperse
after an explosion.
And so in their lonely blindness they touch one another
between the legs, between day and night,
because they have no other time and they
have no other place, and the prophets
died a long time ago.
At the Monastery of Latroun
At the monastery of Latroun, waiting for the wine
to be wrapped for me inside the cool building,
all the laziness of this land came over me:
Holy, Holy, Holy.
I was lying on my back in the dry grass
watching the summer clouds high up in the sky,
motionless, like me down here.
Rain in another country, peace in my heart.
And white seeds will fly from my penis
as from a dandelion.
Come on, now: Poof, poof.
When I Was Young, the Whole Country Was Young
When I was young, the whole country was young. And my father
was everyone’s father. When I was happy, the country
was happy too, and when I jumped on her, she jumped
under me. The grass that covered her in spring
softened me too, and the dry earth of summer hurt me
like my own cracked footsoles.
When I first fell in love, they proclaimed
her independence, and when my hair
fluttered in the breeze, so did her flags.
When I fought in the war, she fought, when I got up
she got up too, and when I sank
she began to sink with me.
Now I’m beginning to come apart from all that:
like something that’s glued, after the glue dries out,
I’m getting detached and curling into myself.
The other day I saw a clarinet player in the Police Band
that was playing at David’s Citadel.
His hair was white and his face calm: a face
of 1946, the one and only year
between famous and terrible years
when nothing happened except for a great hope and his music
and my loving a girl in a quiet room in Jerusalem.
I hadn’t seen him since then, but the hope for a better world
never left his face.
Afterward I bought myself some non-kosher salami
and two bagels, and I walked home.
I managed to hear the evening news
and ate and lay down on the bed
and the memory of my first love came back to me
like the sensation of falling
just before sleep.
I Walked Past a House Where I Lived Once
I walked past a house where I lived once:
a man and a woman are still together in the whispers there.
Many years have passed with the quiet hum
of the staircase bulb going on
and off and on again.
The keyholes are like little wounds
where all the blood seeped out. And inside,
people pale as death.
I want to stand once again as I did
holding my first love all night long in the doorway.
When we left at dawn, the house
began to fall apart and since then the city and since then
the whole world.
I want to be filled with longing again
till dark burn marks show on my skin.
I want to be written again
in the Book of Life, to be written every single day
till the writing hand hurts.
To My Love, Combing Her Hair
To my love, combing her hair
without a mirror, facing me,
a psalm: you’ve shampooed your hair, an entire
forest of pine trees is filled with yearning on your head.
Calmness inside and calmness outside
have hammered your face between them to a tranquil copper.
The pillow on your bed is your spare brain,
tucked under your neck for remembering and dreaming.
The earth is trembling beneath us, love.
Lets lie fastened together, a double safety-lock.
The Diameter of the Bomb
The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard. But the young woman
who was buried in the city she came from,
at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
enlarges the circle considerably,
and the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won’t even mention the howl of orpha
ns
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making
a circle with no end and no God.
When I Banged My Head on the Door
When I banged my head on the door, I screamed,
“My head, my head,” and I screamed, “Door, door,”
and I didn’t scream “Mama” and I didn’t scream “God.”
And I didn’t prophesy a world at the End of Days
where there will be no more heads and doors.
When you stroked my head, I whispered,
“My head, my head,” and I whispered, “Your hand, your hand,’
and I didn’t whisper “Mama” or “God.”
And I didn’t have miraculous visions
of hands stroking heads in the heavens
as they split wide open.
Whatever I scream or say or whisper is only
to console myself: My head, my head.
Door, door. Your hand, your hand.
You Carry the Weight of Heavy Buttocks
You carry the weight of heavy buttocks,
but your eyes are clear.
Around your waist a wide belt that won’t protect you.
You’re made of the kind of materials that slow down
the process of joy
and its pain.
I’ve already taught my penis
to say your name
like a trained parakeet.
And you’re not even impressed. As if
you didn’t hear.
What else should I have done for you?
All I have left now is your name,
completely independent,
like an animal:
it eats out of my hand
and lies down at night
curled up in my dark brain.
Advice for Good Love
Advice for good love: don’t love a woman
from far away. Choose one from nearby
the way a sensible house will choose local stones
that have frozen in the same cold and baked
in the same scalding sun.
Take the one with the golden wreath around
the dark pupil of her eye, she has some
knowledge about your death. And love her also
in the midst of ruin
the way Samson took honey from the lion’s carcass.
And advice for bad love: with the love
left over from the one before
make a new woman for yourself, and then with
what’s left of her
make yourself a new love,
and go on that way
till in the end you are left with
nothing at all.
You Are So Small and Slight in the Rain
You are so small and slight in the rain. A small target