Black Flowers

Lisa Green-Cudek

Portal    -o-   2025

                                                                     I knew him but I didn't know him 

                                                                     That was when I lived in Sha'arei Chessed 

                                                                     The Gates of Loving Kindness 

                                                                     Over forty years ago 

Hole    -o-   1981

                                                                     Jerusalem's January air was damp 

                                                                     The apartment I shared was cold 

                                                                     In the stone buildings 

                                                                     No one had central heat 

                                                                     And I was afraid to use kerosene 

                                                                     I would walk eight blocks  

                                                                     To make a telephone call 

                                                                     The surface skin of my American materialism    

                                                                     Like just-warmed milk

                                                                     Before it is skimmed 

                                                                     I’d come to shed that outer layer 

                                                                     Exposing holes in my identity and filling them in  

                                                                     I learned part time at a co-ed Yeshiva 

While cleaning houses and waiting tables  

                                                                     Mostly, I was trying to become a better person  

                                                                     And make myself into a poet 

                                                                     Watcher of a new and ancient world  

                                                                     I learned to daven 

                                                                     Made blessings before meals 

                                                                     Went to three services on Saturdays 

                                                                     Steps were my real prayers 

                                                                     Jerusalem's streets, my real synagogue 

                                                                     When the sun sank low in Katamon

                                                                     I walked past roses in front of stately homes

                                                                     That Palestinian Christians used to own 

                                                                     Through their windows, I glimpsed Israelis

                                                                     Drying dishes and tucking children into bed                                                                                      

Manhole -o- 1981 

                                                                     I walked the city blinded to things in front of me  

                                                                     Layers of stories beneath my feet  

                                                                     Broken bricks  

                                                                     Broken bodies 

                                                                     Broken livelihoods

                                                                     And families 

                                                                     Losses named and unnamed 

                                                                     Communities buried 

                                                                     Under dust of fear 

                                                                     Smothered in the haze of everyday 

                                                                     In West Jerusalem, Israelis rushed 

                                                                     In and out of Bauhaus-style apartments 

                                                                     Magenta bougainvillea bubbling on balconies

                                                                     Perforated aluminum shuttering windows

                                                                     Thistles and weeds scratching by the street

                                                                     Through hard-packed dirt 

                                                                     Forgotten tools rusting by chain link fences 

                                                                     Invisible wreckage from the Shoah, the Nakba 

                                                                     Scattered over parched places 

                                                                     Six months of heat and thirst 

                                                                     Then rain and sudden green 

                                                                     Four months of damp and cold 

                                                                     Then spring's brief feast of wild peas and poppies 

                                                                     Everything magnified by scarcity 

 Aperture    -o-   1981 

                                                                     When I arrived in the holy city 

                                                                     I got a job waitressing at the Tachana ha Rekevet 

                                                                     The café in the train station  

                                                                     I hadn't expected to find such a sordid place 

                                                                     In Jerusalem 

                                                                     Dim lights in daytime 

                                                                     Red vinyl, greasy food, crude grins and glances 

                                                                     I quit within weeks 

                                                                     When a customer pinched me 

                                                                     I had stayed in that job counting the hours 

                                                                     Because each afternoon, at the bar 

                                                                     A poet and his wife hunched over drinks 

                                                                     Heads tilting toward one another 

                                                                     Cigarette smoke wrapping them in a tent of privacy 

                                                                     Even the mean waiter who worked with me 

                                                                     Spoke the poet's name wistfully 

                                                                     "Carmi, that's T. Carmi"

                                                                     As I walked between tables  

                                                                     Clearing dirty dishes and emptying ashtrays 

                                                                     My eyes would turn to them

                                                                     Trying to glimpse inside the sanctum  

                                                                     Their togetherness made 

                                                                     Carmi's mind 

                                                                     The Holy of Holies 

Spring -o-   1982        

                                                                     I found my way to Sepher v' Sephel one day

                                                                     Book and Cup, a used bookstore and café

                                                                     I grazed the shelves in Poetry 

                                                                     A hand reached from behind  

                                                                     Pulling a volume from its shelf, “Excuse me  

                                                                     I just noticed a first edition of one of my books 

                                                                     It isn't in print anymore" 

                                                                     I turned to see Carmi

                                                                     T. Carmi 

                                                                     Plain and speaking right to me 

                                                                     His face a terraced home  

                                                                     Wrinkles as sculpted by time  

                                                                     As Jerusalem's ravines 

                                                                     Eyes like pools in an oasis  

                                                                     Reflecting the world and drawing life to them   

                                                                     Carmi's words were a spring  

                                                                     His poems watered me 

Well  -o-    1982

                                                                     Carmi followed the path of Hebrew verse

                                                                     Traversing centuries 

                                                                     He turned over stones. Cleared rubble

                                                                     Sifted stories from dust 

                                                                     His studious mind walked up

                                                                     And down hills of texts 

                                             Surveying and searching for clarity  

                                                                     Along the way, Carmi paused to drink from wells 

                                                                     And rest in shade. His translations like overtones 

                                                                     Word upon word mingling in time's thickness

                                                                     Books and women knew Carmi's hands                        

                                                                     He wrapped himself in each like tallisim

                                                                     Offering prayers  

                                                                     The past chanted from parchment 

                                                                     The present hummed from his partner's skin 

                                                                     Moments awakened from under time’s blanket

                                                                     Carmi held them

Rifle Scope -o-    1948

                                                                     When Carmi was the age I’d been when I met him

The ark of his adulthood opened in Brooklyn

                                                                     He shouldered our people's struggle  

                                                                     As he would a Torah scroll     

                                                                     Its message bound to him like Tefillin 

                                                                     Carmi left America 

                                                                     A Zionist rabbi's son but, really, a pilgrim                                                                                                       

                                                                     He walked along charred and broken streets

                                                                     Among the few remaining ruined Jews 

Alive on Europe’s fertile ground                           

                                                                     Carmi sailed to a fetal Israel  

                                                                     Two thousand years of exile answered by return

                                                                     What did Carmi feel when he saw 

                                                                     Other people who flourished in this place

                                                                     With roots as wide and deep as an olive tree’s

                                                                     Or did he blindfold his eyes

Anthem trampling love songs and lullabies

During desperate days of battle and blockade

Did Carmi drive a thinly armored car  

                                                                     On a road beneath snipers of the Arab Legion

                                                                     Did he walk through alleys and wadis 

                                                                     Pointing his rifle at Palestinian men and their kin 

Trading deaths and trading lives 

                                                                     These questions only now rise in my mind 

Tear Duct    -o- 1982             

At Sepher v' Sephel 

                                                                     Carmi showed me a book  

                                                                     With a black cover 

                                                                     Ein Prahim Shorchim, There Are No Black Flowers 

                                                                     Its pages inhabited by Holocaust orphans  

                                                                     Children Carmi had cared for in France 

                                                                     At war's end    

Whimpers and whispers limped from their lips

                                                                     Hovering above death’s landscape                  

                                                                     Ghosts pressed through tender tissue and skin

                                                                     Pried open young wounds

                                                                     Escaped through their sobs 

                                                                     Carmi swallowed them

                                                                     They scavenged in the folds of his cerebrum 

                                                                                                         Book 

                                                                                                         Cup 

                                                                                                         Second Hand 

                                                                                                         Land 

                                                                                                         Word 

                                                                                                         Black 

                                                                                                         Flowers 

                                                                     Carmi opened his first edition in front of me

                                                                     I saw him glimpse the cusp of himself           

                                                                     When shadows tussled in his skull 

                                                                     Questions exploding through mind's darkness       

                                                                     Lamb's blood marking his door frame  

                                                                     Every night. Rest passing him by 

And I, a stranger, heard the scars in his sigh                                                                                  

Bomb Crater  -o-     2023-25

                                                                     Trespass

                                                                     Cold as if rising  

                                                                     From stone to air 

                                                                     Damp settling  

                                                                     From air to stone 

                                                                     As people went about their days    

                                                                     More than forty years ago 

                                                                     Carmi was alive then  

                                                                     I wish I could speak with him now

                                                                     Hear what he would say 

                                                                     As Israelis take and take 

                                                                     Rampage. Hate. Obliterate 

                                                                     When I knew him, Ophira and Yamit 

                                                                     Were korbanot for peace

                                                                     But now, each American bomb that Israel drops

                                                                     Shatters streets folded inside of me 

                                                                     Each drone, tank, sniper  

                                                                     Wipes out my own connection to the land 

                                                                     Where is Jerusalem? 

                                                                     What is Jerusalem? 

                                                                     Who is Jerusalem?  

Wound   -o-   2023-2025    

                                                                     Now, ghosts escape through children's wounds  

                                                                     In the West Bank, Lebanon, Gaza 

                                                                     Palestinian poets keen from their graves 

                                                                     Hungry people walk 

                                                                     Through decimated streets

                                                                     Carrying the old, young, amputees 

                                                                     In Gaza, there is no 

                                                                                                         Bread

                                                                                                         Milk

                                                                                                         Shelter

                                                                                                         Medicine

                                                                                                         School

                                                                                                         Water

                                                                                                         Rest

                                                                     Blistered feet walk and walk

                                                                     Bare hands part rubble 

                                                                     They do not stop

                                                                     In Gaza, children die  

                                                                     Death's landscape consumes them

                                                                     Small ghosts squeeze through parent's wounds

                                                                     And escape through parent's sobs

                                                                     The world swallows them

                                                                     They scavenge in the folds 

                                                                     Of our collective cerebrum                                                                                                              

Rupture -o-    1925-2025       

                                                                     I knew Jerusalem but I didn't know her 

                                                                     That was when I lived in Sha'arei Chessed 

                                                                     The Gates of Loving Kindness

                                                                     Over forty years ago 

                                             I swallowed lies 

                                                                     The creative revival of my skeletal people  

                                                                     As intoxicating to me as wine 

                                             Dead and dead push against my skull

                                                                     People living and dying pry my eyes open

                                                                     I see. I must see. I now see what I never wanted to see

                                                                                                         Orphans 

                                                                                                         Trespass 

                                                                                                         No Kerosene 

                                                                                                         Starvation

                                                                                                         Human  

                                                                                                         Flowers 

                                                                                                         Blackening 

Tear Duct -o-    Today

                                                                     Jewish prophets weep 

                                                                     From their perch in the clouds            

                                                                     Watering 

                                                                                       roses 

                                                                                                         in Qatamon 

Sha'arei Chessed: Hebrew, a neighborhood in Jerusalem called The Gates of Loving Kindness

Yeshiva: Hebrew, a place of religious learning

Daven: Hebrew, to pray

Katamon: Hebrew transliteration, name of a neighborhood in Jerusalem

Shoah: Hebrew, designating the catastrophic mass murder of six million Jews from 1941–5

Nakba: Arabic, designating the Disaster of 1948 when 750-800,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed by Zionist forces

Tachana ha Rekevet: Hebrew, train station

Holy of Holies: Innermost sanctum of the ancient Jewish Temple

Sepher v' Sephel: Hebrew, a bookshop and café named Book & Cup

Torah: Hebrew, the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures

Tallisim: Hebrew, ritual prayer shawls

Tefillin: Hebrew, Torah verses enclosed in small leather boxes wrapped with straps to arm and head during morning prayers to bind the wearer to G-d's word

Wadis: Arabic, designating narrow, shallow valleys or dry creek and riverbeds

Ein Prahim Shorchim: Hebrew, Book Title, There Are No Black Flowers

Ophira and Yamit: Hebrew, settlements Israel built in the Sinai desert and withdrew from in 1982 to fulfill a Peace Deal with Egypt

Korbanot: Hebrew, sacrificial burnt offerings to G-d              

Qatamon: Arabic transliteration, name of a neighborhood in Jerusalem

A good introduction to T. Carmi can be found at Poetry International: https://www.poetryinternational.com/en/poets-poems/poets/poet/10220071_Carmi#colla