Seven Stakes Near the Syrian Border "Seven Stakes Near the Syrian Border" appeared in the 1995 issue of Pequod.
Dalia, even your looped handwriting,
backward, Hebrew that it is, unfolds,
a map behind my eyes: the creased
tablecloth, sectioned paper under
our dinner when we joked of digging
up stakes spiraled in barbed
wire and blooming bindweed near
the Syrian border.
As the sun
set over Mt. Hermon we leaned back
on rusted tank-traps left over
from war. Orange groves spread
in the valley, graves in the minefield
silent. What do the stars mean to you?
you asked. I wouldn't answer,
afraid anonymous hands might break
the dust and point to Mars,
bloodthirsty and envious.
Toward
absolute location, the ocean, we pass
postcards between us like flotsam
across the other side of the world,
open landscapes enveloped in memories:
our re-created days, written
on the seventh. Somewhere, a lone
osprey stoops and spears a fish,
not caring for particulars.
You taught
me at the beach, scooped
a fistful of sand, let it spill
through your fingers, pointed at waves
that arced to our toes. In your
country, water-soaked sand meets dry,
makes energy. A mother sends her son
to fight. She learns to live
with absence, you said, to teach
the living.Dalia, what sort of places
were your words? What I think of most:
your legs hooked in mine, the skyline
of Akaba, destroyers cruising through shadow
in blue, private water. Sabbath
on the beach.
Night unfolded itself
on the gulf with Orion bright
enough to tear it in two. I told you how
distance affects our perspectives
of light. Yes, you whispered, Look
in the candles.
I saw nothing. What
was it I saw in your eyes? Maybe
your mother mourning a flag-draped
casket. Maybe tanks roll and pitch
over from the blast of the rockets.
Or when your father hid beneath
the piles of corpses at Auschwitz,
with nothing to live for except a chance
to speak.
Was it your heart I heard?
Or was it water splashing the pier?
Did you hear his voice pitching
in his chest as he embraced the G.I.'s?
His paralyzed lips mumbling answers
to questions caught in American throats. . .
I have seen it all, it's all here
inside. You tried
to teach me: words are
replacements, like candles, all we have
to fill what we have lost. Look, you cried,
when I said you were wrong, we have
always done this.
Your lessons are hands,
dismembered memories clenched
under my skin. Charges of astonishment
waiting to be stepped on.
Our words are
tangible prisons, dots across a no-man's
land, locations made legends by distance,
even in name. From this bench
I watch couples who are content
to be leaning, with no need to talk,
even turn. I touch my cigarette
to your letter. And look: a circle
of flame flowers in which (I hope)
no one is mourning. Stubborn
as your eyes, it blinks and smokes,
not dry enough to burn.