The Sunday Poet: Helen Bar- Lev

Helen Bar Lev

Helen Bar-Lev was born in New York in 1942.  www.helenbarlev.com   She holds a B.A. in Anthropology, has lived in Israel for 46 years and has held nearly 100 exhibitions of her landscape paintings, 33 of which were one-woman shows.  Her poems and artwork have appeared in numerous online and print anthologies.  Six poetry collections, all illustrated by Helen.  She is the Amy Kitchener senior poet laureate, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2013 and is the recipient of the Homer European Medal for Poetry and Art 2016.  Helen is Assistant to the President of Voices Israel. She lives in Metulla, Israel.

 
Great Synagogue, Rome

Also a Full Moon Here in Spain there is also a full moon and the hotel celebrates our exodus from the holyland five long days ago with dishes of calamari and other sea fruit delicacies; flamenco dancing is an after-dinner delight The full moon and I eye each other, he chastises me – what you doing here when you should be home in your Jerusalem and not in Spanish exile – don’t you realize how difficult it was for the Lord to get you out of Egypt, that it was not easy to move the earth and the heavens, to part waters, and you in your gratitude flee to Spain, from which you were forced to exodus five centuries ago, to which your kin were forbidden to return by rabbinical proclamation, and this whole land screams it, its history repeats its stupidity ad infinitum, and to this country you come for the convenience of ignoring the commemoration of that other evil exodus from Egypt five centuries plus three thousand years ago, before the fact of Jesus entered any contemporary imagination, before Queen Isabella raped the Americas, expelled you Jews?   You know this, every molecule of you senses it it has entered your blood stream, your collective Jewish memory, it explodes your emotions, pellets your conscience and here you thought you would find a peaceful vacation, in this nation alien? Go home!  says the full moon, soon, I say, soon… © 4.2006 Helen Bar-Lev) (A Poet's Haggadah, 2008)