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Ruhama


ISSUE:  Autumn 1996

Here in this wadi we lived during the war.
Many years have passed since then, many victories
and many defeats. I have gathered many consolations in my life
and squandered them, many sorrows
that I spilled in vain. I’ve said many things, like the waves
of the sea at Ashkelon in the West
that always keep saying the same thing.
But as long as I live, my soul remembers
and my body slowly ripens in the fires of its life story.

The evening sky lowers like a bugle call over us,
and our lips move like the lips of men in prayer
before there was a god in the world.

Here we would lie by day, and at night
we would go to battle.
The smell of the sand is as it was, and the smell
of the eucalyptus leaves
and the smell of the wind.

And I do now what any memory dog does:
I howl quietly
and piss a boundary of remembrance around me
so no one else can enter.

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