Jerusalem

Remembering Blake’s Jerusalem, and Islam’s Jerusalem, and our Jerusalem of the Zionist dream, I remember my Jerusalem, she to whom I’ve been married these 33 years now, as of 10/30/2009, my wife, my Nancy.

While reading S.Y. Agnon’s Betrothed, I wrote the following on pages 82 and 83 this morning, responding to, “The Consul was very pleased with [Jerusalem]. True, what he had seen with his own eyes was unlike the Jerusalem of legend or the Jerusalem of his imagination.... But since one did not really know where to make a start, or how to proceed in the way of reform, it was best to leave Jerusalem as she was.”

I have loved Jerusalem all the days of my living.
I loved her when I rejected her
And I loved her before I knew her.
She who lay with me in other worlds
She called to me here, and I sought her out.
Oh Jerusalem, your loving fills me.
I who was tossed as the seaweeds on the shore
Have been carried by your tides
To great depths. I who am but a grain of sand,
Now storm-tossed out to sea, there
You and my Maker are merging into One.