White Cranes
by Ben Corvo
(Dust Storm, Jerusalem)
All around, topsoil is blowing away.
The air is drawing close around us.
Were our eyes keener, we would see
flocks of tiny swallows, or a flotilla
in miniature: fishing boats, dinghies, rafts.
Instead we see the disappearance of
outlying neighborhoods and the near ones.
We are glad to see certain things go:
the megaliths of the Holy Land complex
lurking like creepy uncles, the Herodian
arrogance of certain public buildings
in the city center, or sites of minor
mortifications, as if places could be
the architects of our fashlas.
It is our own disappearance that disturbs
—evenings, say, coming back to apartments
after a long workday, the dust muffling
the traffic noise outside, the narrow
cone of lamplight seeming narrower than
last night’s, preparations for dinner,
table, silence, hours reading while we eat.
I have seen the Old City only once
since I returned, and then from a distance,
from an opposite ridge, the yellow walls
blending with a yellow sky, and now,
even inside, I fear, I would not see
a city at all but only gaping
mouths of doorways, mouths of alleyways.
The burnt-out tank in San Simon Park
was gone long before I arrived, and now
new disappearances threaten: playgrounds,
a basketball court, centennial spiral of
olive trees, live oaks, children’s birthdays.
This is to say nothing of a gun
metal flash seen shortly after sunrise.
High above the haze over Jerusalem
ragged lines of cranes are keening
as they wing south along the long rift
running from the Beqaa to Olduvai.
When they return, they will find our hills
dun-colored, smoothed
beneath a thick blanket of loess.
“I have lived much of my life at the fringes of war, and my work often focuses on how personal, familial, and communal memories of war and violence are both revealed and concealed in the fabric of daily life. I wrote ‘White Cranes’ several years ago following a choking dust storm here in Jerusalem, which was said to consist of churned-up topsoil from the civil war in Syria, maybe a day’s drive away.” —Ben Corvo
Ben Corvo’s poems have appeared previously in Salmagundi, Magma, and other publications.