If a child walks on Jerusalem's walls.
should a rainbow appear?
While in the old Jewish cemetery
a raven's wing reaches upward.
Among the stones inscribed in Hebrew
the flute player and the golden cross of the sun at
T'sanque
Across from the graveyard, windows of housesóten of
them
like so many eyes or commandments,
I'd swear it was Russia, 1910.
But what is the flute player doing here
resurrecting the dead.
He is the Anasazi god of fertility, his penis a
flute.
He is the hunchback, the bringer of music
growing among the graves, small blue flowers, vines.
The cornices of graves like gabled roofs
all crooked, like teeth.
The child looks back over his shoulder
as he takes his morning stroll to the citadel to the
dome.
A child walks on Jerusalem's walls.
This is the line that divides nations, peoples.
His shadow cast into the courtyard of the wailing
wall, leviathan.
He is strutting, a soldier in the making.
Participants, celebrants the size of ants.
A child walks on Jerusalem's walls; is he Arab or
Jew? some will ask.
He is a child looking back through the four arches,
portal at the top of the steps leading to the
citadel.
He is walking away, looking back to a distant time
when the only conceivable answer was yes.
I dreamed I was in the courtyard,
I was asked to
chose between three religions:
the Christian I knew, Moslem scared me,
I went to the Jewish temple. I chose the oldest,
but the choice was not mine.
Summer 1991
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