Seven Laments For The War-Dead

1

Mr. Beringer, whose son

fell at the Canal that strangers dug

so ships could cross the desert,

crosses my path at Jaffa Gate.

He has grown very thin, has lost

the weight of his son.

That's why he floats so lightly in the alleys

and gets caught in my heart like little twigs

that drift away.

2

As a child he would mash his potatoes

to a golden mush.

And then you die.

A living child must be cleaned

when he comes home from playing.

But for a dead man

earth and sand are clear water, in which

his body goes on being bathed and purified

forever.

3

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

across there. On the enemy's side. A good landmark

for gunners of the future.

Or the war monument in London

at Hyde Park Corner, decorated

like a magnificent cake: yet another soldier

lifting head and rifle,

another cannon, another eagle, another

stone angel.

And the whipped cream of a huge marble flag

poured over it  all

with an expert hand.

But the candied, much-too-red cherries

were already gobbled up

by the glutton of hearts. Amen.

4

I came upon an old zoology textbook,

Brehm, Volume II, Birds:

in sweet phrases, an account of the life of the starling,

swallow, and thrush. Full of mistakes in antiquated

Gothic typeface, but full of love, too. "Our feathered

friends." "Migrate from us to warmer climes."

Nest, speckled egg, soft plumage, nightingale,

stork. "The harbirngers of spring." The robin,

red-breasted.

Year of publication: 1913, Germany,

on the eve of the war that was to be

the eve of all my wars.

My good friend who died in my arms, in

his blood,

on the sands of Ashdod. 1948, June.

Oh my-friend,

red-breasted.

5

Dicky was hit.

Like the water tower at Yad Mordekhai.

Hit. A hole in the belly. Everything

came flooding out.

But he has remained standing like that

in the landscape of my memory

like the water tower at Yad Mordekhai.

He fell not far from there,

a little to the north, near Houlayqat.

6

Is all of this

sorrow? I don't know.

I stood in the cemetery dressed in

the camouflage clothes of a living man: brown pants

and a shirt yellow as the sun.

Cemeteries are cheap; they don't ask for much.

Even the wastebaskets are small, made for holding

tissue paper

that wrapped flowers from the store.

Cemeteries are a polite and disciplined thing.

"I Shall never forget you," in French

on a little ceramic plaque.

I don't know who it is that won't ever forget:

he's more anonymous than the one who died.

Is all of this sorrow? I guess so.

"May ye find consolation in the building

of the homeland." But how long

can you go on building the homeland

and not fall behind in the terrible

three-sided race

between consolation and building and death?

Yes, all of this is sorrow. But leave

a little love burining always

like the small bulb in the room of a sleeping baby

that gives him a bit of security and quiet love

though he doesn't know what the light is

or where it comes from.

7

Memorial Day for the war-dead: go tack on

the grief of all your losses--

including a woman who left you--

to the grief of losing them; go mix

one sorrow with another, like history,

that in its economical way

heaps pain and feast and sacrifice

onto a single day for easy reference.

Oh sweet world, soaked like bread

in sweet milk for the terrible

toothless God. "Behind all this,

some great happiness is hiding." No use

crying inside and screaming outside.

Behind all this, some great happiness may

be hiding.

Memorial day. Bitter salt, dressed up as

a little girl with flowers.

Ropes are strung out the whole length of the route

for a joing parade: the living and the dead together.

Children move with the footsteps of someone else's grief

as if picking their way through broken glass.

The flautist's mouth will stay pursed for many days.

A dead soldier swims among the small heads

with the swimming motions of the dead,

with the ancient error the dead have

about the place of the living water.

A flag loses contact with reality and flies away

A store window decked out with beautiful dresses for women

in blue and white. And everything

in three languages: Hebrew, Arabic and Death.

A great royal beast has been dying all night long

under the jasmine,

with a fixed stare at the world.

A man whose son died in the war

walks up the street

like a woman with a dead fetus inside her womb.

"Behind all this, some great happiness is hiding."