Jerusalem, I weep for you and for myself.
In wartime you can slip and fall from the tears that recite Jeremiah’s words, “my eyes are a fountain.” They never stop falling, they are the remnant of shrapnel, yearning for gravity to release their tense pools.
In the spring you can slip and fall on the Jerusalem stones, slick with rain, and in the dry summer you slip and fall as the sweat rolls down your back, your legs, pooling and glossing the pavement.
Still, in Jerusalem I am loved, not because my name passed his lips. Or because he declares my breasts will always satisfy him, budlike and tender. I am loved because I exist on purpose, and that is irrevocable. Isn’t the very existence of this city the same? She’s a chosen and contested jewel.
Below the library window the uncultivated orange blossoms, the fragrance enveloping as you walk under the boughs. Petals strewn like garbage across the street. The orange itself is more bitter than a lemon, more wrinkly than an etrog, a fruit of festival, an emblem of earlier, equally violent times.
We are exorted to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, and as residents we are expected to pick up the psalm books left at the bus stop and declare “peace within your walls, security within your borders.” Blessed are those within you, Oh Zion, and blessed is the one who takes refuge on your holy mountain.
