In the covered shuk an orange was the only source of light,
the spices snored in canvass bags all night in Jerusalem.
There are always scored stones above, curtains, flags below,
shifting their gravity from shoe to shoe in tight-fitting Jerusalem.
The cracks in the Western Wall are soaked in prayers,
the doves are scraps of light above Jerusalem.
The Mount of Olives crouches over the Wailing Wall:
bleached bone, bleached stone, sun-crumbled white Jerusalem.
Like teeth broken on what they’ve been given to say,
rows and rows of white boxes, asleep against the might of Jerusalem.
Bullet holes are horizontal, rain-bored holes are vertical.
The pools, the ritual baths fill themselves in the sight of Jerusalem.
No other city has drunk so much ink;
who from the sages would know how to write, but for Jerusalem?
Previously published in The Cortland Review.
Marcela Sulak, author of ” Decency” and “Immigrant,” has translated four collections of poetry from Israel, Habsburg Bohemia, and Congo-Zaire, and co-edited Family Resemblance: An Anthology and Exploration of 8 Literary Genres. She directs the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University.
