Postmark Israel: To a Crypto-Jew
— My sister writes from Jerusalem
The Ethiopians are here,
gawking at the strange white Jews,
voices like mockingbird
song—
hearts wide-awake
I imagine we rowed to Palestine gripping the oars
only children
winter coats tossed to the wave
for the promise of first fruits muti-seeded cupped
in our hands—
And they say more Russians are coming
with eyes as fierce as the eyes
of muzzled bears, tongues
half-frozen, just beginning
to speak
If I grew up solid and tall
my losses cut loose in a starling flock
over the wedding canopy my lover's prayer shawl
held up by six rifles at mid-day
between the plow and the seed,
our sun-burned backs carving roads for the generations
come back to this little wheel this speck of Asian
continent—
On Sunday, another
bronze balladeer
just hit dry land;
near the Wall he sang:
We are branches from
the old tree,
from church and jungle
hideaways, now
are returned
If we learned anatomy in the orange grove
in the silence of Eingedi's gazelle
in the refrain of unstoppable birth
in our daughters' becoming
until rifles couldn't give us
one last day to build
or one more breath—
Give us a land
where sleep is a spring in the desert,
where obsessions rise from one's throat,
word upon flat, upon sharp,
where utterance rings daily
in a more acute ear—
and the trumpet of the pole star
tugs castaways
home.
