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The Significance of an Identity
by Yoel Nitzarim
Thrust explosively into an Israeli
policeman's back, the five-inch-long
dagger reopens a bloody wound
deeper than that of one
man's body —
the wound bleeding —
life's basic body building block
in the global religious center of
Old Jerusalem.
Attacked while patrolling the
Muslim quarter, treated in
emergency fashion in the
holy Christian Church
of the Holy Sepulcher,
this man's fate
explores
the guise donned
kindred adherents of the
Three Great faiths — a bloody shirt
disturbing the immiscible consistency of their
consanguineous, colloidal cadre.
Perambulating the Via Dolorosa
four weeks previous
to the '01 Intifada
a Jewish American couple
of late child-begetting years
becomes
prophetically absorbed
in colloquy: the conception of a human being,
continuing an appellation
the quasi-forsaken memories
associated with three uncles,
fallen victim to the Nazi death camps
and one grandfather,
a survivor of early
twentieth century East-European pogroms.
WITH WHAT ANGUISH THE AREA
OF THIS INFANT'S IDEATION
MUST BE REFLECTED ON:
WITH WHAT PRIDE
DOES THE CHILD'S
SURVIVAL BRING TO FRUITION;
WITH WHAT AWE
EACH LIVING SOUL
ETCHES OUT A PLACE ON EARTH.
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