Poetry
JEWS AT HAIFA
The freighter, gay with rust,
Coasts to a bare wharf of the harbor.
From the funnel's shade (the arbor
Of gourds from which the prophet, without trust,
Watched his old enemies,
The beings of this earth) I scrutinize
The hundreds at the rail
Lapped in the blue blaze of this sea
Who stare till their looks fail
At the earth that they are promised; silently
See the sand-bagged machine-guns,
The red-kneed soldiers blinking in the sun.
A machine-gun away
Arei
men with our faces: we are tom
With the live blaze of day-
Till we feel shifting, wrenched apart, the worn
Named stones of our last knowledge:
That all men wish our death. Here on the edge
Of the graves of Europe
We believe: truly, we are not dead;
It seems to us that hope
Is possible-that even mercy is permitted
To men on this earth,
To Jews on this earth.... But at Cyprus, the red earth,
