The Dead Sea by Neeli Cherkovski
THE DEAD SEA
one hundred and five degrees
in a wasteland,
you are less than 2 miles
to the Arab Sheik’s encampment
reads a road sign, and 2,000 years
too late for anything
other than a mystifying and shallow
sense of loss
2 days earlier a young man
my age took off my Levies
in a Christian hostel and knelt
in prayer, I unbuttoned his shirt
and found my way
up the ramp the Romans built
to complete their siege
the Masada fortress is one of the things
you see
at the Dead Sea, you see also
your own assault
on a body of history
brocaded with fabrication
abracadabra
and the historians dance
on countless graves,
the poets prance
into oblivion,
the clowns surge forward
like a sandstorm
the salt of the sea is palpable
you can feel it
on your tongue
humans go up the ramp
and down the ramp,
humans maim and kill
and tell lies and build
barbed wire fences
and slaughter their festive
animals and tease the bulls
until they die
in the Lutheran Hostel
of the Old City
I was washed in the salt
of the young man
who leapt like a gazelle
and fell asleep at my side
as the moon
touched Jerusalem’s
pink midnight stone
then at the Dead Sea
they sold Coca-Cola for
a high price, sorry no
water, not water you can
drink, and sorry but history
is almost over, history
fell into the wadi and is
struggling to get on its
feet, you can live and
lie, lie and die, make love
in a pale blue room
built of chalk and oak
and sit on the bus
all the way home, all
the way across the
Dead Sea to the one
that is dying, and feel
as if you are both
a Roman and a Jew,
and meet the two of
them as you close
your eyes
the sea, surging
Dead ocean of
mind, saline
plains of tide
and rumor, one may
move through the house
of redemption, a fine
floor, radiant windows
so the sea will follow
over time’s chasm,
way below sea level
in a land torn
as most land are
by music, muse,
and a lone lute
the living earth may live on
like our dove, cooing,
claiming a branch,
poised over the salt,
shadowing the arid
water, say below time, in praise of
those things we cannot
own, we cannot imagine,
we will never divine
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