The City of David

I never saw his city but in dreams

the tall block towers of his crownèd head

stone sinewed walls along the ridge of his arm

and between the spires and his hard bent knee (the foot

planted flat in the desert)

the valley of his beard, dark with pine trees

and white with smoke.

And the city, steady on his shoulders,

shines dully, burnished

though his eyes on the rooftops burn golden.

A thousand cobbled wrinkles run their maze

Palms and arches shade his countless courtyards,

the craggy men of his narrow lanes,

the pearl-fingered daughters of his dusk

and the Cave of Kings in the cavity of his chest.

דוד מלך ישראל, חי וקיים‎

 

***

 

Postscriptum:  I was in San Diego, taking coffee and a paper after a walk through Balboa Park, when I saw nearby a young mother and her infant child.  The mother was singing in Hebrew, to the delight of the child.  The song had only one verse, the line quoted at the end of this poem, transliterated as David melech yisrael hai v'kayam.  I didn't know what it meant.  Neither did a certain other young mother, who asked the first what she was singing.  She responded, "David, King of Israel, lives forever."