1 Cyclotron Road

At Cern
my father's people
that jet set
of physics
wait for mother
cyclotron to birth
a black hole
small enough
to bite an ankle
undetected.
Under microscope
they glue together
muon-gluon small
detector panels
to catch what
the eye itself
can not
fathom
to discover
we are made
of stronger stuff.

Icarus

First: wings -
a liability:
watch birds
cascade
into clear panes
that only people
seem to see
on any mundane
morning avians
transgress some
glass expanse
at high altitude.
No, wings - far too
dangerous.
And why fly
to greet the sun
when it's rays
descend anyway?

The Situation 


On the bus to work

Crossing town I

Wonder whether

This line today

Is marked to reach

Those distant hills

I set out for

Or if it will

Simply cease

To exist half

Way to Scopus

As others have.

On a plateau

Meters above

The archive

Where I preserve

Historic reels

In 16 millimeter,

A stone plaque

Marks a time, a place

Where I lost

A comrade in arms

To the struggle

Internal to the city

And external to the

World at large.

I leave small

Stones. I miss her

Contagious enthusiasm,

Her belief in peace.

The stones say

I still believe. I

Leave them for her,

For everyone lost

In the struggle

For justice

And coexistence

In the city named Zion,

Al-Kuds, City of Peace,

Jerusalem.

Where every winding alleyway

Hides a new universe

And the slick worn stones

Give no traction in the rain.

Arad Wadi Life 


The desert offered me

Asylum, an acacia

Spreading out limbs

And leaves to gather

In the moisture of fragrant

Soil, the sun’s nourishing

Rays, the desert’s own

Stability. I learned

The acacia’s posture,

Its gentle rustling motion.

I spoke the desert

Language, drawing in

Winter rain from

The earth and sunlight

In summer. I made my

Home in wadis, seeking

Out desert canyons.

I created shade

For small animals

And insects. The

Occasional hiker

Shielded the sun

With my branches.

I spread my arms

And reached upward

To my limits.

I found my footing

In the wadi

In the late afternoon

Breezes.

Tatiana 


Tatiana wrote

A poem

To tell Evgeny

She loved him,

To claim her Russian

Byron. He enjoyed

Her verses, but they

Couldn’t cure

What ailed him.

Khandra, that

Uniquely Russian

Literary chronic

Depressive state

That later plagued

Lermontov’s Pechorin

And tended to end

In superfluous duels.

So Tatiana read

His books instead,

Taking stock of his

Collection, seeing

Byron’s influence.

Tatiana rooted out

That bipolar

English Lord

At the source of all

The trouble. The Russian

Byron’s skipped town,

Tatiana’s all alone,

A fish without a bicycle

In a time when fins

Required wheels.

Birth of Zionism 


Love springs up

Entirely formed

When the place

Names from the text

Book form themselves

Around armies of pale

Fingered pines sprouting

On every turn

Of the road

From the Lod airport

To Jerusalem

And the sunlight strikes

The white quarried

Limestone bricks

Just so.

Wrestling with

God becomes more

Than a concept –

Love fashions it

A way of life,

Offers it for

A calling

That a ram’s horn

Trumpet, a muezzin

Call, a bleating

Of goats or the

Intertwining

Of sister semitic

Languages should

Sound the clarion

Bell to awaken the

Sleeping blood,

The guarded heart.



Love is ready.

She wears garments

Woven with gossamer

Threads of Amharic,

Armenian, Hebrew,

Fine linen of Russian,

Yiddish, Aramaic,

Arabic.

Ornament

The men in
ivory towers
groomed me
to become
one of them,
but never
a spouse:
what ever I wore
my mind doggedly
outdid me
easily outweighing
outfits calculated
to ensnare
all but the blind
yet my thought
blinded men to
formal aesthetic
branding me
academic,
unsuitable
as pure iconic
ornament.

He strode in
technicolor
with a grin that lit
the room
electric
and I fell
from my ledge
of indifference.
The serotonin flow
changed allegience,
serging across
synapse,
fight or flight
or fascination.
I saw the emerald city
gleaming
from afar
through poppy
fields, that first
color infusion
seared through
my vision
the hand tinted
reel unfurled.

How It Happened



I was the innocent

Serpent, changing skins,

Offering you the fruit

Plucked ripe from

The flowering tree

Of knowing good

And evil. You spoke

In tongues,

All your own, yet

Your mother tongue

Eludes you, lost

Somewhere among

The pomegranate fields.

Now I live

Closer to the ground.

The Call of Bells



I hear the carillon bells

Chime the hour

The way the fog

Carries sounds

Across my hometown

From the university

Bell tower, or

The dawn muezzin

Peals that ring

Through Jerusalem

With the odd bleat

Of a sheep, a wandering

Goat, a penitent kneeling

In prayer. The elision of

Sounds, a call to a city

That beckons me home.

Cultivating languages


Is not like archiving.

They don’t store well

In vaults, kept at

Low temperature

To prevent them

Turning to vinegar

Or catching fire

All by themselves.

Languages need sunlight,

Water, feeding,

Constant talking to.

They need reassurance,

Walks around the reservoir.

They thrive in busy places –

Train stations, airports,

Bus stops – they won’t be

Shut away, but follow us.

Where we go – there they are.

You and your flights

Of irony, those pale

Brown eyes that

I worried

Couldn’t withstand

The light of the noon sun.

Your speech pure

Poetry, lilting words

Together like another

Tongue entirely

In my first language –

Your third

Or fourth – polyglot!

 

Then I began to see

That you were just

A man, unlike any

Other, but still

Flawed. Yet I feared

Losing you, dissolving

Us: that plural

That synergy

Our oeuvre

The chevrutah

That was my world.

We ended politely.

I want my books back

You never returned them.

The Scholar While Manic

"I have taken a pill to kill
The thin
Papery feeling." - "Cut," Sylvia Plath


One pill makes you forget
the notion of reading
until the thin blue light filters
through the shades across
the sentences and hints
that dawn approaches.

Another asks you
not to analyze the lines
until you've found
all seventy simple meanings.

Then another suggests
that perhaps
the author wasn't
talking to you so
personally and

your analysis
won't end
interpretation.

Because sometimes
even
the muses
need to be quiet
and leave you
in peace.

Jerusalem perches
on fault
lines running
millenia deep
and kilometers wide
the city neither
slumbers nor sleeps
lest some hairline
fracture should slip
beyond its vigilance.
It is quiet
with the sound
of a thousand
borders stretching
to breaking point
at every angle.