This is not a tribute to those from Tel Aviv
Who could see only beauty in the snow
That fell on Jerusalem
A year after the Gulf War.
They would as easily have fiddled
While the Holy City burned.
Nor is it a defense of the morbid fellow
Who, in responding to this record fall
And the damage inflicted on half our trees
With the claim that like the Greenhouse Effect
The storm were somehow man’s creation,
Failed to notice his daughter’s joy
On beholding snow for the first time.
No, this poem is in praise of those
Who understand that, just as at some point
Death shall take us all, tomorrow never comes.
For the truly wise or individuated soul
Sees simultaneously the evil and the good;
The vacant skull together with the vivid face.
Jerusalem
16 January 1992