TEL AVIV IN THE EARLY FORTIES

The child who may die for his country,
I am in the Axelrod Library
behind the green marble building on Allenby Street:
two rooms, so many books
and the librarian sits at the entrance
and tells the children looking for books about heroes, page-turners with adventures
not only Tarzan, child, not Jules Verne
and not even Sienkiewicz of In Desert and Wilderness.
Take Memories of the House of David,
it will keep you in suspense reading the history of your nation,
connect you to your past:
and you will know why and where you came from
to our beautiful, hot country

I swallow Memories of the House of David
and am willing to die for my people.
I lift off from the sofa that serves as my air field:
a string of bullets around my neck, my fingers
on the machine gun.
I descend to besieged Jerusalem,
mow down Nebuchadnezzar’s soldiers
rat-a-tat-tat, whoever’s head peeks over the wall
catches a bullet and rolls back.
After five hundred sixty years I
station myself courageously opposite the columns
of Vespasian and Titus
from Yodfat to Gamla and Jerusalem and from there to Masada:
the bows and arrows and even the catapults
haven’t got a chance
and at night I once again shower hell fire
on Khemelnitzky’s regiments: even the sword-wielding
horsemen won’t be able
to behead a Jewish child, touch a woman
or abuse a boy.

The next day I’m in Tel Aviv again
between the blue sea in the west
and the orchards in the east
with their fabulous scent of spring blossoms
and the northern river filled with water even in summer
and boats with motors and sails
and oars, and on its banks
dense with vegetation, only swimming is forbidden
because bilharzia makes your urine bloody.
With new library books, I walk on Dizengoff Street, past
Hershel’s kiosk at the corner of Jewish National Fund Avenue,
where I don’t buy anything because the owner’s son
cheated me before the war.
I cross Gordon Street, cafes to my right and left
and not one vacant table –
Cassit, Roval and Pinati –
and beyond them the square, the new movie theater, the Esther,
where a line snakes from the box office
as far as the Nordia neighborhood and its shacks
also on to King George Street, and the sycamores,
the way up Allenby Street, Magen David Square,
and the Whitman ice-cream stand where one must push,
with tricks and sometimes elbows
in order to reach the counter.

And from White Russia, where my parents set out
so I would be born in Tel Aviv,
machine guns were already shortening
the lines of Jews over the grave pits.
Enormous rivers reddened with the blood
of bearded men and beautiful young women
in the family photos from there,
and soon, as it only was clear long afterwards,
they decided on crematoria.

TEL AVIV IN THE EARLY FORTIES