EMBARKATION
for Lilia Osadchey

Tel Aviv -- harbor of re-gathering
for a vision torn from the sleep of God,
encoring from the sea the ships laden
with the cedars of Solomon's Temple.
Now a man wielding divine forgery
attempts passage to Paradise with blood,
--- one more curse to beat dancers into clay.

Today your mother's eyes beheld your shroud --
like black sails just cresting the horizon.
Always in sight of acacia blossoms.

© Jeffrey C Alfier

As you likely read in the news, there was a terrorist bombing in a Tel Aviv disco last year (2001) that killed 19 teenagers. Lilia Osadchey was one of the murdered, and the BBC news had a special feature on her funeral which showed her mother touching her coffin before it was lowered into the earth.

That Tel Aviv is a 'vision torn from the sleep of God' speaks to the long silence many Jews accuse God of, especially considering their vast suffering from the Holocaust. In addition, at a forgotten port near the present day Tel Aviv, Solomon brought in cedars to build supports for his temple in Jerusalem.

The man 'wielding divine forgery' was the terrorist who believed he was doing God's will. The line, 'one more curse to beat dancers into clay' is adapted from Yeats' 'The Curse of Cromwell', a line that spoke to an oppressor of old (not necessarily my opinion; just a poetic perception on Yeats' part). 'Black sails' is borrowed from Greek mythology, the tragedy of Aegeus who plunged into the sea at the sight of the black sails which the ship bearing his son forgot to lower. Those unfurled sails indicated to King Aegeus that his son was dead, when in reality he was quite alive.

Finally, 'always in sight of acacia blossoms' is adapted from a famous Jewish rabbi of the past who once said that two things always persist: the butcher and the blooming acacia trees.