Jerusalem – A Poem
Elhanan ben-Avraham, born in 1945, is a professional artist, poet, writer and father of two, grandfather of four, living in Israel since 1979. He has served in the IDF, taught the Bible internationally, published five illustrated books of poetry, painted two large Biblical murals in public buildings in Jerusalem, and most recently produced THE JERUSALEM ILLUSTRATED BIBLE, among many other works. He and his wife live in a quiet village in the Mountains of Judah.
The City breathes in dreams
scrawled on brittle goatskin scrolls
emerging from caves and tombs and
awakening into limestone and flesh,
a thousand poems by a thousand poets
in as many blazing tongues, its walls
scaled by Jebusite and Hebrew,
by Crusader and Marmaluk, tortured
and dismantled by cruel Romans into
deaths and resurrections outliving
every fleeting tide of time and empire,
its waves returning to cast treasures up
against the golden gates to breathe
again and birth the dark-eyed
girl of the orient sparkling downcast
before the passing black-curled youth,
and blind beggars counting the
bristles of brooms in the scents of incense
and spiced coffee and leather and
roasting lamb, to the twirling tune
of merchants trading copper and brass
and Bedouin rugs in the musty oldness of
ancient stones as distant cousins are
forced close through the narrow
passageways, fixed-eyed zealots
of faith dashing to mosque and minaret
and church and synagogue to knock
on the backdoors of the one House
mantled and dismantled times over,
restless flocks of searching humanity
pass along the patient limestone
walls awaiting peace, wrinkles of
tired time sprawl around the bubbling
hookah and watch tiny curls of smoke
waft memories of harpsong and
chariots and clashing swords upward
through the occidental orient merging
skins of onyx and ivory pacing endlessly
the weaving eons spread between
the stone gates pocked in conflict
of a thousand generations, the timeless
Jewish warrior watchmen uncompromised
on the pinnacles guard the playing
children of hope and all the dangling
ends of the skies meeting in Jerusalem,
irreconcilable.