I hear a call to celebrate this moment –
after a thousand years of fear
stalking our lives and shaking the flesh
visiting our houses every Easter, after
centuries of confinement by the winters
in the forests and the pale ghetto sun –
when we may embrace each other now
before the sets of blue and silver candles
and spin our dreidels on the floor, illuminated
by the green tree that our children have adorned
set with glowing angels, gifts bow-tied
and in the ages that our prayers imagine
when everyone has flown around the world
there will be prophets still, the walls
instead hauled down. Damaged or beset,
our descendants will hold yet with high regard
our Yom Kippurs and Ramadans
and celebrate Hannukah, Eid Fitr.
The child abusers, eaters of industrial meat
and those degrading others with their hate
will be consigned that day to distant memory
and shame. I’ll kneel then close beside you
facing Mecca and prostrate
and you’ll rise with me to sing the Amidah
as civilizations pass us, grasping hands.
Dead souls may raze the city towers again
or rend the olive groves with barrier walls
but we will still know how to love, my brother,
and I won’t forget the kindness that you gave
me in the UN corridors, at your betrothal
in the crowded house and humid air
of the Swahili coast where we first met
And later in the book of all the ages –
in the bombed-out cates of Safat
amid the soft breasts of our Galilean hills,
the places for the pleasures of strong coffee,
apple cake and ceaseless conversation
which we have reopened and rebuilt –
at last, three stubborn faiths are sweetened
by the love of siblings, broken down
and what can pass for peace is celebrated
by the chink of tiny cups raised up together
loaded with sugar, heavy with grounds.
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