Praha 48, or The Importance of Dialogue, Part II

Dear Sara,

On the last revision of my poem "The Grass is Always Green in Israel," you commented:

Each Jew has his/her own experience with and reaction to Israel- it's just one of those things that is known by all but has many interpretations on how it fits in our lives.

What exactly do you mean by "known by all?" What is known? Who is all? All Jews? All Ashkenazi Jews who were affected by the Holocaust?

Thank you for politely refusing the plane tickets for me. And I'm intrigued by your assertion that "[my] feelings for Israel extend beyond this specific poem." It happens that you're right, but I never really discussed it with you. And I conclude, respectfully, with a poem I wrote last year about Israel, and have recently re-worked, in light of our discourse.

The Conflict
Draft 4,

After Countee Cullen's "Heritage"

What is Israel to me?

A place from where news comes
like pieces of hot shrapnel,
or like pieces of Jaffa orange that burst juicy
in my mouth like small explosions in the
crumbling limestone buildings,
glowing golden in the "Jerusalem at Sunset"
postcard by the telephone.

Israel is the voice at the other end
"We're okay - everybody is okay".

Blue-and-white clad schoolchildren
marching down Fifth Avenue
ordered to sing loudly enough to drown out any protests.

Naomi Shemer on a record player.
Songs in Hebrew I can pronounce flawlessly, but
cannot translate.

Curly dark hair and strong faces,
sand, dry heat, the sounds of a sitar.
The view of the end of the gun barrel -
young soldiers, silhouetted against chain links,
traffic jams at checkpoints
"the demographic problem".

Sour pickles in a can,
women with their hair in scarves.

Old struggles dying hard people
dying every day, in the
streets, alleys, cafes, busses
dying behind the wall, which is 5%
of a barbed wire fence that cuts
into the innocent skin of olive trees.

What is Israel to me?
A muezzin's call, reflecting off the
dome at sunrise –
counterpoint to the harshness of a soldier's bark –
a fire
of questions, history –
my family's stories
and their racism

The yearning to go back.

oppression-occupation-Gaza-settlements
Haifa-freedom-land-of-promise
peace as a process

my head, buried in the sand
my eyes pulled open by the lashes.

What is Israel to me?

an unfulfilled prophesy,
with more swords than plows

but a reminder that hope survives
like olive trees, twisting around the barbs
and always reaching for the sun