Linda Stern Zisquit has
published three full-length
collections of poetry: Ritual
Bath (Broken Moon Press,
Seattle, WA, 1993), Unopened
Letters (Sheep Meadow Press,
NY, 1996), and The Face in the
Window (Sheep Meadow Press,
NY, 2004), as well as
translations from Hebrew
poetry, including Wild Light
(Sheep Meadow, 1997) for
which she received an NEA
Translation Grant, and Let the
Words: Selected Poems of
Yona Wallach (Sheep Meadow,
2006). Her translation of Rivka
Miriam’s poetry These
Mountains: Selected Poems of
Rivka Miriam will be published
by Toby Press in 2009. She has
recently completed a new
manuscript of poems called
“Porous.” Born in Buffalo, NY,
Zisquit has lived in Jerusalem
since 1978 with her husband
and five children; she is Poetry
Coordinator for the Shaindy
Rudoff MA in Creative Writing
Program at Bar Ilan University,
poetry editor for Maggid, and
runs ARTSPACE, an art gallery
in Jerusalem representing
contemporary Israeli artists
www.artspacegallery.co.il
June 2009/Sivan 5769
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H ouse
L INDA STERN ZISQUIT
At dawn I opened the door
and with my first step
crushed a snail,
a large one—I wasn’t looking
down—and its house is shattered.
Rain, the first real rain
brought out the snail
and now—
nothing is finished
ever
but destruction
can I repair the house
restore it to what it was
a simple roof from
the rain?
What does a house hold
but little conversations
a body turning in the dark
a warm arm
across the back
a lifetime of bedtimes
anger swirls and
then it is over
So long we searched till
we found the house
the grass where children played
a table where we ate
what more and why
is there only one time
like that
memory zeroes in on
the pungent end
You find houses get obstinate easily,
when you strip them naked
Before we came here—
others before us
sifted lentils and beans,
sat on the small triangle
of stone and earth
in the tiny courtyard
to chat at the end of day
mint in the air
saffron on the fingertips
This morning the house was altered,
the walkway after a man left
became again the place
he had just been,
like before.
So many things have passed
without a word between
without breath
or gaze upon
till the years’ fragrances were
absorbed and the walls
of the house no longer
recognized his absence.
Today the ashtray
and the table and the
gravel of the walkway
took on their old
tasks, holding dust and ash
and footsteps for a second
longer, nothing passed
without notice nothing
emptied without a pause.
The snail whose house
I shattered before the day
began
dried on the stone porch
till nothing remained.
The evening came and still
I was afraid to let go
of the latch
the repeated words of so long ago
for whatever small
truth they held—
there was no time
no taste
or desire
to return there
yet the house remained
filled with the smell of his
cigarette
and the path returning
from farewell
widened, opening to me
to memory
to our live bodies, to another city
with its beckoning rooms
filled with fabrics and perfumes;
every turn revealed
who I no longer was, who
I had once been.
What soothed and hurt
was that in coming back
he filled a space unused.
I reminded him of something
he once said:
how the freedom of space
without apparent limitations
is itself a liability for
the architect
while the various restrictions
one comes up against—
neighbors, laws, a fence—
enable a plan with ease.
And he said yes, life is
like that—but I stopped
listening, I cannot recall
another word as he
blew the easy smoke
and then so easily
slid open the lock to go—
