An Alternate History Poem

Jerusalem

The hosts of the Romans have surrounded Jerusalem

but they bide their time while in the holy city’s streets,

rival factions reach for each other’s throats. 

Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai watches,

powerless as Jeremiah,

as the bands of zealots bleed each other dry.

Once, by the waters of Babylon, an exiled people sang:

If I forget thee, Jerusalem, may my right hand lose its skill. 

If I forget thee, Jerusalem, let my tongue cling

to the roof of my mouth.

Now, sheltered within her gates,

they deface her.

The people are already hungry

when the factions set fire

to each other’s food stores.

Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai calls

his disciples together.

It is better to go to a house in mourning,

he tells his disciples, than to go to a house where they feast.

So they lay him in a coffin, lift it up on their shoulders,

carry it out past the rebels

who bar the way against escape.

And so it is

that Yohanan leaves the embrace of Zion’s hills

in a box as dark as the womb.

And as he leaves,

he prays for the holy city.

That it never again

see such strife.

That it never again

be used as a pawn

in some self-styled savior’s

game.

That its gaze be turned away forever

from the vanity

and iniquity

and ignorance

of men.

His cry ascends

from the pit of a feigned death

and the last rabbi ever to teach on the temple’s steps

is granted a single

miracle:

God bends the arc of time.

In the heat of the fire,

as the three walls of the temple burn,

the Lord forges a future where the fourth burns also.

Roman generals order the stones of each building

to be scattered, the earth sewn with salt.

No strangers settle there, no flocks lie down

to pasture: the ruins of Jerusalem are home only

to wild beasts: scavengers in a desert.

Pilgrims come only to tremble in fearful awe

at the valley of unmarked graves.

Muhammed’s night ride

is from a heap of ash.

Would-be Crusaders bash

each other’s heads in

at home, because

there is nothing

called Jerusalem

to conquer.

No Jerusalem to inspire.

No Jerusalem to divide.

In a quiet cemetery in Tiberias,

Yohanan ben Zakkai

rests

in peace.