(Dedicated to Suse Moyal)
Like all profound relationships,
Ours began at the shallow end
And, via the channels of discovery and revelation,
Gradually reached the depths
Where knowledge turns to understanding,
Thence to love.
My first assessment of you, inestimable Berkeley,
Was through the windows of a hired car
For which we paid too much.
It was late; I was weary,
Having flown from Israel
And driven from ‘Frisco Airport along the Fault;
Across the Bay Bridge.
We knew too much about the recent quake.
That night you revealed nothing;
Presented merely a harsh American mask:
Empty sidewalks; dim-lit gas stations; seedy motels;
Symmetrical, numbered streets.
Even our rented wooden house on McGee
Looked dark and mean.
I felt gripped by a sinister shadow;
Yet it proved to be my own.
I had flown from Israel,
Or should I say, had fled.
The thought of imminent war in the Middle East
Had wove around me a shroud of fear,
Which followed us across the world to you,
Compassionate Berkeley.
Not that the peril was merely in my head.
The American president,
His own true motives far from clear,
Continued to spurn all parley
With a former client who, like Milton’s Satan,
Threatened to waste Creation
With hell fire.
The Apocalypse of another John seemed due to become reality.
Then there was my enduring dread
That the blood of Palestine’s children
And the tears of ravished Lebanon
Would one day, as tongues of vengeful fire,
Return upon the waters and in the air
To chastise the abusers of the Promised Land.
Linkage is a Biblical notion –
Which, on the whole, the Jews of Berkeley
Understood; for, though concerned about
The threat to Israeli lives,
They dismissed America’s reasons for risking
Those of her own youth.
Such Jews are committed first to Truth.
Thus, within the protective aura
Of a community I could trust,
I survived the madness of the West’s liaison
With licentious War. In turn that dark shroud
Began to dissolve and give way
To new light –
A light which merged with yours, O Berkeley.
Jerusalem
10 March 1992