they said
at the entrance
to the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Upon entering I felt like laughing.
Its too dark to see anything!
It's as if
they want you
to feel.
To enter the Pyramid is to enter into the well of history
beautiful and brutal
Climbing up narrow passageways, hands on the cold metal rungs
Head bent under stone
instead of climbing up
you are climbing down.
Down into the shaft of forced labor,
of lugging stones
Larger than
the human heart
Stones that have crushed so many
They were here, "my people"
toiling through time and space
to make a mountain with their hands
That could not be climbed, nor crossed,
That could not crumble
as our weak flesh is known to do.
I look away.
Now "my people" have morphed into some
sarcophagus of the pharoah they fled
with a whip to the heels
of the newly oppressed
As the age old paradigm reveals
over and over:
we live out our trauma at the expense of our children. Or in this case--
somebody else's chidren.
I can't forget:
After the exodus
was the brutal slaughter
of the inhabitants of Canaan
the "Promised" Land.
--
The air is cool,
a pool of tears
suddenly refreshing
against the blazing sun
The same Sun under which
they toiled endless days
for this:
A perfectly sculpted tomb.
seamless.
empty.
The only thing
they couldn't loot from the tomb
was the stone tomb itself,
carved from within the rock.
The heart of the pyramid can never
be torn from the cage of its stone flesh.
Strip searched, violated
the tomb still had four perfect walls
Against them, my small voice
echoes into the distance
I open my mouth
an am surprised to find
at the exhale of one cool breath
on the edge of my lips
the SH'MA.
It is the prayer that unites us
Jews of the diaspora
of the desert and cold mountains
of the shtetles and palaces
of the new world and the ancient
For one moment in time
in the tomb of the Pharoah
despite all my misgivings
and shame
--and without my consent--
My soul laid claim to my people
whose suffering became their weapon
To their memory--both shining and tarnished--
echoing uninvited
in the chamber of my lungs.
