Jerusalem

Tomorrow, when I will fail to live
Who will tend to your dead garden?
Who else might become a recipient of your anguish?
My image will then no longer cling to the portico
Of the Armenian church
But my will, my desire...
To live, to puncture life with a hammer
You will see it in the freshness of the heavy air
From my letter I composed in Mt. Olive's
You will walk down those alleys
In the tiny streets leading to Magdalene
You will find some of my friends, the shopkeepers, the stones
The little tent with tulipans in Gethsemani
And my insecure hand
Carving wounds into the glittering marble
Defying the old churches on the way
Challenging their stale passion
Deflecting the pilgrimages from the frescos
Into the alleys of burnt down Roman buldings
And water channels of another age
You will see me then
Calling your name outloud
At the graveyards, and with other clowns
But no one will write letters then
And my present silence will speak to your feet
In a language you might not entirely grasp
But it will cleanse your sufferings
Only when I am away
When I can no longer deaden your sense of humour
With the heavy weights of my melody
With the lire of the poet turned away
Imagining you becoming a Greek
Conquering the whole of Jerusalem
For the eternity of the now
Holding my faith in your mouth
Turning it into a palace
With less ambar than coal
Seeing through my eyes
The beauty of your own dread
The compliments I paid in your abscence
And by then I shall resemble only one of the stones
In your way
To the mount
And you will stumble
Only to remember
That by failing
I could attain the only shelter available for me to live
You will remember my sayings to other people
They will be written on the door of every little monastery
But no one will help you decipher them
You might find them as well in post cards
About Ain Kerem and Abu Tor
And again, it will not help
You can never be sad enough as to want to return to Rome
You can never taste my blood
Deeper than the end of the night
Lost in herself
Wearing the tiredness of the morning
Watching you in your sleep
Without believing
Without any desire.