FROM THIS YEAR IN JERUSALEM

Falk, Marcia

FROM THIS YEAR IN JERUSALEM The First Day High wind and a blackbird push the sky across the pale Judean hills. The windows shake. She pulls herself out of the blankets, a flash strikes the...

...hada yQjl and she slips the coins between her breasts sets the basket on her head and goes on I run the faucet fill a jar thrust the tangled stems inside go back to sleep later from a dream of gestures eyebrows hands and eyes and dreams of doorbells chime upon chime of doorbells I wake suddenly Hebrew and Arabic words are often mixed in the __i f 11 ,1 • .1 1 1 /» . , 1 1 lingua franca of the marketplace in Jerusalem...
...I will never return to dry land...
...Legend has it that she was banished into the hills of Galilee by a jealous lover and from there she wandered, lost, fleeing him and looking for shelter...
...My feet are light as light, they do not move...
...Herzlia I've worn through the soles of my shoes, my feet so tough, they no longer feel the ground where cyclamen split rocks, recklessly...
...yallah is used in both languages and means "Let's get going...
...I've put on a lizard's skin, the Salt Sea slides down my neck like oil in the sun...
...Ein Kerem Song of the Eucalyptus She was once a noble lady, in Jerusalem...
...Jerusalem The Flower Woman 6 a.m., the doorbell gestures of eyebrows, hands, eyes and bunches of flowers hada hada hada yofi yofiyofi hada yofi yallah...
...Through my feet and up my body, into my fingers and hair, I soak up the river's bed...
...fingers thin thistles stick skin a bowl of blue figs...
...For now, let them be sheep, alive in a field...
...Now I'm heading west, my suitcase stuffed with chunks of halvah, sacks of chickpeas and almonds...
...muddied and messy as though the wind had swept the field's debris onto their coats, thistles, burrs, and weeds tossed about like schoolyard garbage...
...Now for the facts without the dyes of wish or memory: sheep in a field, up close, twenty of them, or thirty, chewing the grass on the last day of March while forces spread in the North...
...I have put down my roots and I am always thirsty...
...Soon, the color drains from the grass, the air cools around my knees, the sky softens and blooms, the wind rises...
...and iallen petalS TlTlg the DTeaKiaSt table Hada means "this" in Arabic...
...I make my dominion here, build air castles in the weeds...
...yofi means "beautiful" in Hebrew...
...On the Banyas ridge in the sun, I am thin and long as my shadow, translucent as the cyclamens aglow in the fields...
...But in truth they are grayish and scratchy like those awful woollen leggings I wore through second grade...
...I stay...
...Through my leaf-thin hands I hear the beat of the stone mill, the rock doves, the waterfall...
...Can we afford more than what the cold eye sees...
...It is morning, the city a cup full of light, a bright flask of wind to rise to...
...Woman Through the Window...
...Tomorrow I'll beat my clothes like the Bedouin women at the streams, but the viscous scents will cling like musk to the skin where the body claims ^ its home...
...Somewhere near Syria, she fell in love with a river god, whereupon she decided to leave her body in order to join him...
...The sheared faces of the pines, the naked red anemones stare back at me in the afternoon...
...Copyright < 1980 by Marcia Falk...
...The spring after she disappeared, a eucalyptus sprouted near a stream...
...and across their backs, smears as red as freshly scraped knees...
...Golan Marcia Falk teaches English, Creative Writing and Hebrew Literature at SUNY, Binghamton...
...She pulls herself out of the blankets, a flash strikes the eastern walls of houses...
...This Year in Jerusalem," excerpted here, is part of her collection of poems...
...Sheep in a Field I might have them be white and soft, their curly fleece bobbing in the air like curds in a bowl as they browse...

Vol. 5 • April 1980 • No. 4


 
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