We ate hot corn-on-the-cob from huge steaming vats along King David Street. We stopped at Zion Square in front of the old movie house, at the corner of Ben Yehuda Street (that isn't there anymore), where we bought cubes of cactus candy dipped in white powdered sugar, and we drank cold spring water out of brass cups attached to copper spigots with thin brass chains and no one caught a disease from the cup - perhaps we all had the same germs - or because we didn't obsess about catching diseases from cups in those days. We didn't worry about cigarette smoke or cholesterol. We drank hot mint tea with 3 teaspoons of sugar, and dipped our jelly donuts in un-pasteurized honey. We didn't drain the oil off of our meat, or remove the skin from savory spiced chicken, and we cooked over open fires to roast lamb until it was succulent and delicious without any fear of carcinogens. The wars and the terrorists' bombs made living immediate and void of analyses. We kissed passionately, and held back no portion of our hearts. Those sweet peaceful days between wars were cherished. We knew they were to be valued and remembered. We knew they were fleeting. We embraced them while they were in our grasp, and did not have later regrets that we let them pass without knowing, without noticing, without laughing out loud. We never had to say: "I wish I had paid more attention." Every minute of every day was grasped and squeezed, and every single drop of joy and laughter, love and friendship, was extracted from the passing time in full measure. Never has anyone truly lived life if they have not lived it after war.
Jerusalem was raped and plundered in ancient times, bombed and looted in modern times. Jerusalem endures those indecencies, and she resists and succeeds. Neon doesn't fit, and plastic
domes are out-of-place. Somehow we know she is her own. We debate her fate, and we argue and kill for the sake of Jerusalem. She is not ours.
Jerusalem lifts her golden face to the clouds and to the stars, and we are allowed to stay a little while, and we are gone. Jerusalem will "be" as long as the Earth "is". Only mortal Mothers remember their dead children, and we are the children of the Holy City - the immortal Jerusalem..."They will see peace..."C
lick
by, S. Smarthere to add text.
