USA

natzar@optonline.net

JERUSALEM, THE 9^TH OF AV

Jerusalem, you call for me:
"Take ten breaths and walk through layers of your lives.
Return again, reborn again, come home again,
while your soul still remembers its presence
on Mount Sinai, when the Torah was given"

Jerusalem, One Jerusalem, I trust my life with you
I let you lead me
to the era of the First Temple that king Solomon built.
I enter the ancient walls through the Jaffa Gates
into vitality of your streets, your market, your pink-stone houses.
But I tremble from panic and fear –
my brethren of ten tribes were sent to Assyrian exile.
Enemy are at the gates, they march on your roads.
Oh, my beloved Jerusalem, can prayers save you?
You are surrounded, beseeched, crushed, humiliated.
and on the 9^th of Av your Temple falls into ruins.
There are a few of us left to survive the Babylon captivity.
From now on, at that day you hear Jeremiah’s lamentation –
our grievous memory, our heartbreaking contemplation.

You take my hand forward seven hundred years,
to the glorious Second Temple that king Herod built.
I walk through the Hilda’s Gate – main entrance of the Temple.
Then I immerse in a ritual bath – mikvah, and only after that
a Levite guard lets me into the hall, lit by olive oil lamps.
I stop in awe before Kotel – Western Wall of the Temple.
In that time thousand pilgrims come here for holidays
from Egypt, Greece, Babylon, Yemen, Arabia.

Oh, Jerusalem, what an awful time you take me to.
Strong Hebrews, great and brave, fight Romans
but I am scared – those Zealots also kill their own people,
who wants to surrender and save you from inevitable ruins.
They restrain your moves, limit your breath.
No surrendering or zealots can save you;
and on the 9^th of Av Romans destroy the Second Temple.

Why do you let go my hand?
Nasty smoldering wind from ruins blows me out off your soil.
While I was away for the next two thousand years,
I know, your heart was bleeding for me -
Spain Expulsion, Inquisition, Holocaust, and now terror
ripped off your heart, your flesh, but not your spirit.

My Jerusalem, you call for me – I am coming.
I will walk on your pavements above layers of civilizations,
above layers of your Temples’ destruction, your desecration
beckoned by your heart, your light, your indestructible spirit
to save my soul from desolation in the darkness of uncertainty,
to save you for my Jewish future.

November, 01

© All Copyright, Natalia Zaretsky.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.