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A Prayer
by Ricky Friesem

Dead
is dead.
But please
let me die in bed.
(Plain dead)
Not crimson- pool
and carmine-puddle
Dead.

Not concrete-spattered
window-shattered
red
globs of scarlet
Dead.
A dripping gore-fruit
harvest
from the trees just budding
in the April mist.

" April is the cruelest month,” he wrote.
But in his Wasteland
only rocks were red.

After

In the hot stillness of a desert noon
a crisp of a man, blade brittle,
charred, but still intact,
appears to stir,
then crumbles
in a furnace blast
of wind
that scatters what was life
a flash ago
and lifts the ash
to swirl in manic pirouettes
that dip and rise
and turn
until the whirlwind
dance of death
has sucked into its vortex
every speck of burn-out black.

And then the wind too
dies
and frees the flakes of soot
to flutter down
and settle in a smudge
upon the yellow sand.

Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust.
It wasn’t meant to be this way.

On the Walls of Diyarbakir

Yesterday the name meant nothing.
Diyarbakir, a tangled string
of letters tying up my tongue
with unfamiliar sounds that
challenged me to mouth them
in a word that hung unclaimed
by memory until it slipped
unhindered
from my mind .

That was yesterday. Today
I stand on blood-black
basalt ramparts
thick and high and long enough
to vie with China’s wall for visibility
from space. My Turkish guide,
at ease in a gray patch of shade
cast by a crumbling watchtower,
dispatches ancient history with a
flat automaton monotany. His mind
is unengaged while mine awakes
to the familiar nightmare names.
Oh Hittites, and Assyrians, Macedonians
and Meds. Oh Persian, Roman,
Byzantine .Great Empires. All
vanquished, dead, he says. So why
then do I tremble as I scan the barren plain?

Oh Dyarbakir I know now
that your name is fear.

Forbidden Love

I look into your face
and quickly turn away
lest adoration
tempt the fates
and draw the furies
down
to tear you from me.
Now.
My son.

It wasn’t always so.
There was a time
I dared to hold
you close
and draw in deep
your baby scent
with every breath .
to fill the
void
left in me by your birth.

And with my eyes
I’d trace your face
and learn each curve.
It wasn’t hard to memorize
those simple lines.
I’d marveled at the slant of eye
and upturned mouth
before.
And would again.

And still unsated
I’d caress
your rounded cheek
and let my fingers
brush with feather stroke
the newness of your
downy head
to feel the gentle pulse of life
and let its rhythm synchronize
with mine
until we were as one
again.
Continued

2.

The rapture
of those moment’s
now long gone.
Replaced in equal measure
by the fear
that sacrifice
is still the price
this land demands
of radiant youth,
and knowledge that the cries
of mothers
will not stay
the sweep
of bloody destiny.

History

Dust
Clay Sod Earth
Fields Meadows Pastures
Land Property Country Nation
Motherland Fatherland Homeland
Realm Dominion Kingdom Empire
Dust

Ricky Friesem was born in Canada and moved to Israel with her scientist husband and three sons in 1972. For 25 years she worked as a journalist, editor, and award-winning documentary filmmaker for the Weizmann Institute of Science, whose Communications Department she headed for over a decade. She and her husband live on the campus of the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot. In addition to writing poetry, she has co-authored two cook books: Fruits of the Earth (Adama Books, 1985) and Joy of Israel (Steimatzky, 1976).