On the Eleventh of August at Lod

My then wife and I arrived direct from Heathrow

To the New Jew’s Land.

Not having time to change,

A service-taxi deposited us in our Anglo garb

On a collective field of Warsaw Ghetto survivors.

A bouncing Israeli farmer exited a grapefruit grove

And closed in on his machine

And struggled with me as vision:

 

Under a bluing no-cloud sky

I leaned on an oversized black umbrella.

I sweated at dawn in my Marks and Spencer raincoat.

I connected with the socialist soil in rubbers.

 

And to Molly’s query about the Family Lumerman

He could barely point in a loose direction

For most of him was trying to come to grips

With me.

The tractor and man approached, passed, diminished.

And the man never looked away

From me. 

 

             

 

                                                                                          -   Jeffrey Eisenmesser,  1986