Edmond Sheehy

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Psalm 137 Revisited

I forgot thee, O Jerusalem.
To be more precise,
you never made my day planner.
I was too busy in Tel Aviv
drinking egg creams.
My tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth.
I never knew such sweetness,
not even in candy stores
along the Grand Concourse.

Looking out at the Mediterranean,
lapping the Promenade,
I drowned, feet dug into dry sand,
in short gasps haltingly,
unable to scream.
Transparent apparently
as no one noticed,
I clung where I was slung,
clutching after the faces of Sabra
who hauntingly taunted,
luring me, eluding me
like lost promises long ago endured,
the shimmering images of all the Jewish women I have ever loved.

Can I be excused, Jerusalem,
for being so close, yet looking away?
Jerusalem, your paving stones are eroded by suffering,
your alleyways repeat riddles,
your walls longing.
The paths through your gates are worn smooth
by the shuffling mourners of Zion.
Your wounds remain raw
reopened by casual insults,
so you are continually reminded
how slurs spill into atrocities.
From the time before writing
when only psalms were remembered
because their words rung
as they were sung,
Jerusalem, you have articulated
every nuance of human agony.

However dire the day
let us never forget, Jerusalem,
HaMakom, that the divine fills all space.
There is no distance to joy.
The hills and nearby apartment buildings are davening.
They invite us to minyan.
In prayer who can tell left from right,
who has passed on and who is here besides?

Let us be forgiven, Jerusalem,
that we ever strayed from thee,
that persecuted we might lose faith,
who have been cooled as we stood
in the shade of olive trees in the evening,
watching children scurrying, playing games.

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