Surface Mail

In America, Israel was a map on my wall,

a page of Bible, a newspaper headline,

a star-chart whose constellations

were the Hebrew alphabet —

the swastika, a terrible comet-like Aleph.

I’ve mailed myself into the text:

the proof is the photo on my ID card,

Israel’s seal stamped on my face

like a heavenly postmark.

Flattened by the weight of Diaspora,

I slip easily into the envelope,

drop on a desk in the Ministry of Immigration

like foreign mail from the nineteenth century,

a thin, implausible arrival

speaking the language as learned from Prayerbook

and Bible—King James Hebrew,

and unequal to this life in three dimensions,

inadequate before the white stone riddling the hills

around Jerusalem, gathered into strata, tier on tier,

slope-side crop-shelves of the farming Canaanites.

What message can I bring the shaggy columnar palms,

the broad goose-bumped paddles of the cactus,

the close-up foliage immediately green?

With a cold mercy, it begins to rain.

Jerusalem becomes a stone fountain,

every outdoor stairs a waterfall,

streets ankle deep.

As the white mist permits, Jerusalem’s traffic,

stones and foliage

dissolve into Yahweh.