The Here and Now

for Yehuda Amichai Though you live in a little country, crammed and crisscrossed with debris, the past oppressive many times over— where you buy your grapes David, pausing, eyes a fiery dark girl, a lusty song riding his breath, the old dance urgent at his body; where you buy your bread Christ, stumbling, stoops to heavy lumber— you insist on your own loves and griefs, on living your own life. So you love this city, but mainly as it goes on living its own life, across its roofs the lines flapping, not gaudy banners, but sheets and diapers, pants and slips, as if rehearsing private pleasures. And though you know you cannot win, you play the game with all the skill and love that you can muster, hoping to keep it, keep it going, whatever the fierceness in it, while you learn the repertoire of your opponent’s wrist, the repertoire your own commands, with every stroke surprising you, as in a woman’s glance the abundance glinting of her passion stored away. Those opposing roles, victor, victim both, when they require re-enacting, the moon as ever plays the luminous dome above your god-and-man-scarred rock, responsive to each nuance of the light informing it with this, the latest scene. The sweat you’ve shared between you, juices drying on your hands and moon- lit belly, swirls out of the rutted, stain- stiff sheets a fragrance stronger, more anointing, than the myrrh, the frank- incense the magi brought, a gleam that would eclipse their beaten gold.