In honor of the State of Israel and its 51st anniversary Woodbridge, New Jersey, May 2, 1999
Woodbridge, New Jersey. My parents house.
After dinner I secretly loosen my belt between sips of tea.
The kids have left the table and are off squabbling over the remote control.
Dessert is politics and religion argued over cookies and cake; a Jewish tradition.
Our guests live in England now. Their daughter in South Africa.
Framed by a valance of trailing ivy, Dora tells her story:
she was found fevered unconscious
ulcerated fly-crusted skeletal
with not enough louse-fused flesh
to be breathing but breathing still
breathing the bare typhoid stench
of human compost offal and entrails
buried beneath and blanketed by
the cold cerulean flesh and excrement
of distant relatives in the open pit
they excavated at machine-gunpoint
before they were shot and left to rot
in silent testament
Dora and I lock eyes. Hers are unrevealing, seasoned steel.
Mine are salt-glazed. She has not rehearsed this telling.
I believe she hears what I have not asked aloud.
What is this impossible will to live?
To know you will never sleep without the dead.
To live through and with the weight of the unholy.
To know you will always wonder why you survived.
What is a reason for life when death is the logical better choice?
I refill her cup and she continues:
she was lucky to be more feeble than others
she had the hospital as a place to go
those not blessed to be burned buried
or buried alive with the dead
had no neighbors no home no choice
and while allied troops congratulated
themselves on the liberation
the liberated remained like ghosts
in barren barracks sitting amidst
familiar walls infused with
emanations of burnt familial flesh
I put down my cup. The children have fallen asleep.
I want to know what I cannot truly know.
Americans guess at meaning.
We know a comfortable outline.
Peace is a lawn free of dandelions.
Wealth is someone else to mow it.
Justice is equitable tax distribution.
Anguish is cured by a therapist in a cardigan.
Tribal slaughter exists between cups of coffee.
We want to believe this conversation will cure evil.
Dora reminds us we have been too human:
was it a week an hour a year a month
spent as striped phantoms staring
at the indelible numerals on their forearms
numb unable to mourn to wish to want
these survivors this cruel endless surviving
like a breath with its own involuntary
commitment but without a reason to be
with no reason to have a will of any kind
except the will to die more quickly
they wondered if there were any
purpose any God any reason to believe
they were luckier than the dead
they wondered if there were any reason
to believe anything at all
Dora pauses as she peels a naval orange.
She examines the branded fruit and shifts the conversation:
it is better than a Jaffa and so easy to peel
they don't have these fruits in Israel
but the figs in Israel are the sweetest with
the blood-rich color of a fertile womb and
the purple bronchi flesh of a healthy lung
in Israel every tree every rivulet
every stone and every fiber of mortar
is holy kadosh and kosher built as
kaddish for the dead and the living and
their unburied faith
Metuchen, New Jersey. I am watering houseplants in my living room.
Despite my best efforts, I cannot keep the ficus from dropping its leaves.
Such is the comfortable life paid for with crematoria currency.
To be a Jew alive in this 21st common era century is a gift.
And so, for simchot we bequest trees to you Eretz Yisrael.
May they take root in your sand so far away.
May they find nourishment in your survival
We buy answers to our unspoken questions.
We are too fortunate to know their answers ourselves.
Eretz Yisrael, I celebrate your will to grow green.
It is testament to the unreasoned hopes of past and future.
Your desert is irrigated with the sanguine fluids of life, not despair.
Water (mayim) flows and breadfruit (manna) hangs low ripe and heavy.
When I am called to Torah your being makes my aliyah meaningful.