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The Deronda Review |
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THE LAND, THE PEOPLE poems from the struggle for Judea and Samaria
Contents:
Song Without Melody, by Theone End of Day, by Rachel Heimowitz Moonless Nght, by Rachel Heimowitz Only a Blanket, by Leah LJ Gottesman Benot Yaakov, by Vera Schwarcz Korban Itamar, by Theone Six Years after Gush Katif, by Vera Schwarcz Lesson, by Courtney Druz Grooving the Land, the People, by KJ Hannah Greenberg Carpool in Efrat, by Rachel Heimowitz Judean Desert, by Courtney Druz
SONG WITHOUT MELODY (for two singers) by Theone
I hear a siren. (A bird is singing.) I run for shelter. (I walk in the field.) I see a plane. (The crops are thirsty.) It drops a bomb. (I pray for rain.) A child is killed. (The crops will ripen.)
I hear a siren. (The bird is singing.) I see a plane. (The crops are thirsty.) They want to spill (I walk in the field my blood. of tomorrow. I hear a siren... (The crops are thirsty…) *
END OF DAY by Rachel Heimowitz
In this rocky, sunbaked land the day’s close is liquid spice: a wash of turmeric and cinnamon, lavender and anise,
the hills open, the stones turn gold, exposed, ingots jingling in the pockets of our forefathers,
rocks, like glowing coals, breathing and alive, luminous eyes, turned up and glowing like a room of schoolchildren each looking for answers, anxious to tell their radiant, ancient stories,
every rock a place to rest your head,
and the olive trees, standing, bent and wrinkled, resting their tired elbows on the rocks and laughing
a rustle at the sun, let us run our hands over their silvery hair and whisper their cooling secrets into our ears,
lead us to the dark damp places, the cool, clandestine caves where the urns were tucked like fairy-tale princesses to sleep for a thousand years,
were sung to sleep in the shadowy corners where someone said, ‘This is a secret we must tuck- in and keep in’,
a secret held while we wandered;
and here we are, risen, dusty and returned, in our sandals and our backpacks,
watching the sun’s rusty hair fanned above us, the mountain goats raising their ancient, twisted horns to the wind’s rattle, a blessing like a hot breath, as the day folds over itself and sleeps.
*
MOONLESS NIGHT Efrat, Israel, 2011
by Rachel Heimowitz
Voices rise out of the wadi,
like radio signals, fading in and out.
I can’t tell, Hebrew, Arabic? Fear
grows in me like static, crawling up my spine, rising like a wad of paper in my throat. The stars
sweep down, hide behind the hills.
Mars, a red marble hanging over the Arab village, across the fenceless divide.
Orion, above me, his sword pointing at my head. The damn
windows don’t lock.
If boys, out for a good time, pumped under their t-shirts, faceless under kafiyas, walk across my garden. . .
My children asleep in the house.
I need to feel G-d (there isn’t anything else)
I am alone, windows unlocked,
seven bullets in the clip, a tired blanket around my shoulders.
*
Only a Blanket by Leah LJ Gottesman
On one Friday night in March, 2011, five members of the Fogel Family of Itamar, a community in Israel, were ruthlessly massacred in their sleep.
A blanket twists and slides inside its covers, slinks its way down or smothers your dreams, snags your escape or, for one toddler, saves the air.
They preyed one night on dark houses whose doors resisted probing hands, each footfall over or under signals until one handle acquiesced, yawned open wide, exposing flesh above swollen breasts, the whistle of a child’s yearning, the eager gasps of a pre-teen, extended chords of the father, slackened lips of the newborn. The hunters sliced each layer sawed off the wind, flooding passages with gurgling blood, dilated irises, silent screams.
Alongside the window, a couch, used as a footstool for the fleeing hunters, was covered by a blanket covering a toddler clinging to a pacifier. The couch gave way, it did; the hunters got away they did; but the blanket covering the small child ever so gently never let go.
*
BENOT YAAKOV by Vera Schwarcz
The fragile shoulders of a raped girl carry a chain of hope: we go on, daughters of Dinah — the first to be called Bat Yaakov, the first to grasp the chain of courage, find sapphires of solace in crevices of mud encrusted by blame and doubt.
We come to seek you Dinah, on a terrible day when Jerusalem is burying five holy souls murdered on Shabbat.
Dinah! Imagine a three-month old named Hadas, knifed days before Purim!
Dinah, our teacher.
We whisper your name, first of lost Jews along the tear-studded path of our return.
Your din stands for judgment, a witness for us over thousands of years.
Finally, we glimpse the hey, a G-dly letter culminating your fate, and ours.
Today, seeking your grave, I came upon a troop of Benot Yaakov, some sported pleated skirts, others prim blue shirts, my sisters each. One made walls shudder with her cries.
If you had looked at the time, it was the hour of the Fogel family burials.
I had only one prayer, one word to add to that howl:
Dinah!
* Korban Itamar by Theone
S.R. Hirsch, Chumash, Comments on Emor, Feldheim 2005, pp758, 761, 769
Al cheit (al "Hate") for the sin which
Father, Udi , committed by consistently observing mitzvoth and celebrating Shabbat with his family in joy and wonder; Mother, Ruth, committed by nurturing her children and delighting in watching them grow; Yoav committed by being the eldest son, Elad committed by running after the bigger boys and wanting to grow up to lay tefillin like them; Hadas committed in honoring her mother by nursing at her mother's breast.
For all these sins we must offer sacrifice and atone. The sacrifices have been taken. (altho' the earthly killer "Al-Hate" has not been purified); But how do the rest of us atone?.....
Al Cheit (another kind of Yom Kippur liturgy) For the sin which we committed by evacuating the lands G-d enjoyed us to cultivate and settle; For the sin which we committed by establishing our homes in the Land of Israel; For the sin which we committed by building our nation on the shifting sands of Israel; For the sin which we committed by refusing to give in to the enemies of Israel; For the sin which we committed by taking up arms to defend ourselves; For the sin which we committed by confiscating arms from our enemies; For the sin which we committed by continuing to believe that G-d will redeem the Land of Israel; For the sin which we committed by dealing fairly with our brothers and neighbors in waits and measures even when they do not deal fairly with us; For the sin which we committed by joining together as one people united in G-d's army; For the sin which we committed by believing that G-d will soon put an end to sacrificing the holy and pure ones of our people; For the sin which we committed by believing that in the end G-d will sacrifice the guilty killer instead of the pure korban. For the sin which we committed by believing that G-d will redeem Jews all over the world as He redeems the Land of Israel.
For the sin which we committed by believing that we can never understand G-d's Ways; For the sin which we committed by believing that we can never understand G-d's Time; And for the sin which we commit by vowing that we will continue to commit all of these sins until G-d tells us to stop..
*
SIX YEARS AFTER GUSH KATIF by Vera Schwarcz
Wandering the shuk a white courtyard accosts me, a museum, reminder
of trellises of yellow peppers, orchards of tomatoes, crates of cucumber which had garnished villages graced by shuls, the azure symphony of men and women learning.
In the video room, endless footage of elders begging for mercy, teenagers roped to the holy ark, toddlers offering cookies to soldiers who weep while dragging families from their homes.
They march behind Torah scrolls, minutes before explosions bury all traces of Jewish life.
Tears come unbidden, no answers.
Why?
*
Lesson by Courtney Druz
Scrawlings of calcium carbonate are anachronous, therefore absent. Health risks are known. The following information will be presented in alternate form already fading from currency (just as these markers fade, just as their sharp chemical odor— though those present will sense immediate bodily threat at the dustless inhalation.) Notation of solid on white. Whiteboard is name for any glossy surface where non-permanent markings can be made. Thus outside history. The dictated present of expunged photos, a bloodless fingertip of the Leader’s former comrade suspended for all time next to a duplicate tree.
Turn the page. Certain words may be sprinkled liberally with the assumption of shared significance; other words may cause confusion. If a poet says “terrorist,” says “murder,” listeners may believe the dictionary is upside-down. This is acceptable discourse. Markings for the glittering slick, the appealing cleanliness kept on ice while they hum to the soft ballads of others.
(Over 11 million high-quality DRM-free songs priced at just 99 cents. Preview a song before you buy it. No parking when road is snow covered.)
Now for the training in brevity: eliminate facts. Eliminate thinking about facts, comparing and processing them; chop off all but the finger’s contact point. Eliminate inconvenient history. Shoo the dove from the olive tree, the bloody cardinal from the oak. Shoo the grackle from the sweetgum, the troublesome bobolink from the crab apple.
Chalk dust on the fingers or palm is a remnant of lines copied. Once a common elementary punishment, now surpassed.
The victim is not the murderer. The imperfect savior is not the murderer. The murderer is defined by intention and by effect. You are allotted one page to twist these words.
A long white hair has fallen across the pages of the answer-book from the follicle corresponding phrenologically to the control center of wisdom. The nearness of available water can remove thirst. The nearness of snow is blinding: discuss.
You will note the use of Modernist techniques in a Postmodern context. Thousands of fleeing wings are deafening. 11 million iTunes are deafening. A bomb planted in your head is deafening. Pencils down. Further information is unnecessary. Heads down. Count down. Time’s up. (Dismissed.)
*
GROOVING THE LAND, THE PEOPLE by KJ Hannah Greenberg
Driving to Ariel, native Jews, also our cousins, Spouses, children, habits, hidden bodies, surreptitious Agents bother reacting to sworn enemies’ exculpations.
Best ossified, those others, or, turned to salt. Accreted populations, all prominent white license Plates, bring my fulminations forward. I flash pink.
Turning up Udi David, once of Gush Katif. We harmonize, sing “Back to the Land,” While wadis sprout giant, Torah-built, sukkot.
The klal’s ingathering’s become imperative, Especially as “leaders” sip, sup, sleep with enemies, Fracture our home, destroy our houses, send us out.
“Squatting” based on faith, on trust, partners Us with Ha Kodesh Baruch Hu, Even in modern social systems, in spite of media.
Likewise, Lenny Solomon’s “Scenes from a Sealed Room,” Settlements on burned out hills, plus hope, not checkpoints, Safeguard our sanctioned land, ensure our heritage.
Rocky desolation’s no response to atmospheres lit with trouble. Rather, limestone citadels, sandstone carpets stretching past Ber Sheva, Shelter, color, announce the demesnes of The Mighty One.
No mufti will forever murmur alien incantations, Purl against our boundaries, replace veracity with myth. Fidel servants, we groove this land, we build up its people
*
CARPOOL IN EFRAT by Rachel Heimowitz
Six boys, only eleven, fresh from the pool, sprawl
like cut flowers across the back of the van;
their heads, folded over, drip on my leather
seats. I turn past the entrance to Bethlehem, where cars
marked “P” can clog traffic, where three boys, no more
than nineteen, in full combat uniform, greased
faces, helmets of steel, scuffed Stars of David
on their shoulders, stand behind cement barriers.
One raises binoculars; one slips into a crouch. I drive
on. Down the road twenty more soldiers squat,
their blackened faces drip like shrubs after a summer
storm. They hold their rifles steady. One talks into a radio.
Personnel carriers, like swollen Suburbans stand vigil nearby.
Around a curve, a boy, perhaps sixteen, on the roadside,
his vest bright yellow, his pants, forest
green; his hair corkscrews away like a treetop; a kippa
sits like a nest amongst the curls. He plays a wooden flute, dances:
just a little jig, just a step or two. I roll
down my window. I want to catch a note. I want to hear
that song. But I only gather the radio’s static blast:
“Emdah Echad, a-vore. Root a-vore” over and over. I turn toward
my terra-cotta town, roll the window closed as I drive on.
*
Judean Desert by Courtney Druz
It’s remarkable that the underlying structure exists independently, was there to be found. You enter latitude, longitude, time and date. Every shadow is predictable by the program if you’ve modeled the forms properly. The whole earth is swept by an accurate sundial; right now, its shadow is approaching.
This is one of the particular places. Shallow sand is always renewing itself from the hills’ pale bones. The calloused whorls of crumbled rock and scrub recur, confined by geographical barriers (that is, in contrast to the paved forests I have known, their lingering oaks and squirrels of anywhere.)
You’d think I’m on the moon, all sun and no sun. But actually, I’m where you think I am. If I were more adventurous I’d be lost. I suppose I already am but for the things here, some buildings and a bench to sit on.
I’ll have to buy a guidebook for the names of birds and planted trees. The birds ignore me but the trees, now fading on the nearest slope, might observe the progress of these words growing in shifting colors on the opposite side.
They gray. The hilltop seems a skillful cut-out of low irregular tree shapes backed with orange. The shoaled hills are violet, modulating downward in the spectrum. The wind is picking up. I better go and give the kids their baths.
I never get to stay for this transition so complete I don’t know how we got here. They’re in bed and I’m back but my focus is gone; nothing’s left for me but muscular wind.
You stand at an ocean, dawn or sunset, thinking the same thoughts as everyone else, alone. Something about emptiness does this, something about darkness too. There is a psychological term for it, I think. I think I heard it happens for our benefit to keep us up in trees, away from predators.
There are lights, though, candle-like, in clusters. There is the illusion of proximity— a diamond lit at the end of a long playing field. The gold lights seem close, like stars seem close and small, across a densely wrinkled sheet.
Then came the night that blackened the hills that shadowed the valleys that covered the wadis that watered the goats that fed the peoples that served the empire that ate the empire that ate the empire that ate the empire.
That is a song of children, who are sleeping. A song of children, who are always at the beginning of history, who remember (because their memories go forward) history’s end, the restoration of memory.
It begins with the movement of a few stars down the distant road. A woodpecker’s beat and something far and birdlike; a cat’s cry. It begins with an erasure of dotted black at the right edge of vision, a growing spot like a problem with the eyes. A blue band rising and the shadow rising into it, a still flickering star holding on above the diffusing band.
God, this is so quick, the right hills burning a limn of fine fire along the rim, smoke blooming. Low ground is forming. The near hill hulks in inert charcoals, mellowing on the left. Sky strata build to a more convincing earth.
I’ve missed it again, here now with most of the colors the way a dream is mostly gone at waking. What I want is so far beyond my attentiveness. To alter scales against the crush of distance, to press against the pressing of these hills.
Soundless, the first drift of birds flicker like black stars against soft pearl. I’ve never seen the trees as clearly as now, lit into their shapes just so in deep green velvets on the close hill. Usually their own shadows smudge them, but under new blue opposite white glow, they are flat and calm though drawn correctly.
Meanwhile a gold sun has been uncovered by a smooth shape floating above blue. Now the missing red tones are laid down as a hoopoe lands right in front of me, picking its feathers with a slender beak and fanning its fantastic crown. Of course I’ve checked its name by now. The hours repeat, but the hoopoe has not repeated itself to me.
It leaves me unsure; there were no other witnesses. The reds are orange. I can no longer look at the sun and the hills are no longer to be touched; their flesh is air. The land has subtilized to a mirage of seashell colors, light only.
The sun’s shape is obliterated in light. The daily land has vanished after an hour’s appearance, replaced now by this unconvincing fluff too lovely for cynics. But I won’t lie about it. I don’t need to, anyway; the hills are forming again. Dust is being scraped and mounded smooth.
Colors are dialed up on the western hill; the east is hidden in a blinding blank. In between the whole view has yellowed, not like a faded photograph, but richly as though through a lens of honey. White heat imprints itself around long shadows.
The desert is honing hatched and stippled sands whose contours I once sketched with chalky pastels while the lavender shadows hid. An even sky of blue so simple optical specks like sparks attempt a complication to my vision. Rocks, dust, powerlines, desolate brush; on a far stroke of road, slow gleams and blocks. The near hill edges the sky in easy white; the horizon puzzles like a gray ocean.
My crisp shadow is so artfully curved, a deep hole carved from around my feet. Make’s sense—my head feels like I’m floating and sinking at the same time. The sun’s too strong.
The landscape starts to flatten, pressed down by the sun’s incessent demand, like the presence of children. Now it is as boring as my palm, pale and lined; you would think nothing is happening but really it’s the busiest time of day. The activity is just invisible, lit too well. It passes quickly, that’s why it looks dead.
The kids are playing nicely for a while and I’m looking for the birds in my pamphlet. Millions migrate every spring and fall across this major flyway, but it’s summer. The “rock doves” are pigeons but the best source for a layer of natural sounds through most of the hours.
I should expect that summer means it’s late when shading comes to mold the shapes again. My shadow is about my true length and I feel the warm dust’s rise and dip as if beneath my hand. The view is clear. I can even see some color in the block-shaped cars and trucks passing up and down the far road.
The shadows have reversed since morning but not as in a mirror. The shapes are different. The colors are also transposed though the blind spot has only moved to the nearer hill. I’ve been watching for you. You’re waiting for me to name the new colors, so I’ll say gold, but not like metal or sun, more like skin. Almost the color of my own skin now, on sea-slate shadows, temporary and possible.
*
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