1
The muezzin calls—
whose voice
in heat, in almost
darkness cries the same
(worship
and worshippers)—
five times to prayer,
calls the faithful
to the place
light is,
to the place
his voice inhabits,
himself no longer
embodied except
in this metal
horn spreading
the call to prayer.
The prayer
itself, overheard,
dissipates.
2
From my basement apartment, before the corner market
opens or children break out of doors to whoop
the hour or two before the evening meal,
I hear the pickup, heavy with watermelon,
not the motor at first, but the voice
of the ventriloquist, sitting next to the driver,
keening his one-word incantation through a horn
on the roof of the cab, “Avatiach!”
There is no other word than watermelon.
It is enough to tell the story, to be the story.
The ghosts, having been awakened,
seem to stand in line, village-ghost, peddler-ghost,
the stationary and the transient. The living
come to buy watermelon. Laughing, the ghosts
put up a fence,
as if to say, “Come out of doors.
Come. Let’s have the news. (Watermelon!)
Don’t you know the story is told in passing?”
They don’t wait for a reply.
Upstairs, someone turns on the news.
3
The same siren beckons
us to welcome the Sabbath
and mourn the dead. Only
the duration changes.
* * * *
Years ago, they lit torches
on the hills around Jerusalem,
calling the towns and valleys
beyond the walls to come
greet the Sabbath, the sun setting
behind a hill of fire: earth
and sky, competing fires. Already
the bride flies off my tongue,
hovering between thumb
and index finger, between song
and flame as I light the match.
Come, my Beloved, let us greet
the bride. Come, let us
welcome the Sabbath presence.
And the bride, gathering her skirts,
leaps candletop to candletop, always
descending first on Jerusalem.
She radiates outward.
* * * *
Holocaust Memorial Day,
traffic stops for the length
of the siren, calling the city
into silence. Everything
stops: city buses in center lanes,
passengers crowded
into the aisles or a few
into the street. In my Hebrew
classroom, we stand, turn
to face the window. In these
five minutes, these ten minutes,
we are awkward, without knowledge
of the outside world, and, in a moment,
the siren, too, will stop. We will be
silent, having forgotten how to talk
with each other, not knowing
how to talk with the dead.
Note
“Come My Beloved . . .” is a translation
of a Hebrew prayer sung during the Friday evening service, issuing in
the Sabbath.
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