This started the morning after Ariel Sharon was elected Prime Minister. I was in pretty bad sorts. Everything I'd read about Sharon said he was going to screw things up: a hawk, one who pandered to hard liners, was about to take the wheel of the Peace Process. Great. Where do I sign up for that? I don't know why, but I picked that morning to re-aquaint myself with Wallace Stevens' epic, "Sunday Morning," and I was captivated by the lines "...Over the seas, to silent Palestine/Dominion of the blood and sepulchre." The next morning-- for the record, a Sunday-- I wrote the first part of the piece. The original-- let's say working-- title was "And Bloody Palestine." It was a rant, and rather an unpleasant one, against Sharon and the hawks, and it left me with the very unpleasant feeling that I was butting in where I didn't belong.

So, naturally, I subjected my buddies at Zoetrope's poetry site to it. Having gained valuable insight as to how rough one is realistically allowed to be towards Israel, I began writing the second part, which really reflected much better the kind of message I was really after. At that point Gab Orgrease, a (now)long lost Zoe buddy, asked if I had ever read Yehuda Amichai.

So at that point the piece turned around 180 degrees. After re-reading some of Yehuda's work (in English, of course) I decided what I wanted was a memorial, a remembrance, of the man who so eloquently mourned his country's violence and short-sightedness, and a lament to join my voice with that of this man who, I am convinced, was a better poet than I will ever be.

I seem to be writing alot about dead guys lately. I wonder why that is?

I managed to pick up a volume of Yehuda Amichai's collected works on a recent trip to Berkeley, as well as a copy of Pat Metheney & Lyle Hayes' album As Falls Witchita, So Falls Witchita Falls-- on vinyl, mind you. That was the highlight of the trip. For more on that subject, stay tuned to the Works in Progress page.