My son was drafted. We visited him at the army base, in the desert,
the desolation that tents and their ropes and tent-pegs
try to make us forget. The whitewashed stones along the path
were so blinding white-hot that I covered my eyes
like a Jewish woman lighting the Sabbath candles,
I sot down on a stone near an empty tin can, and the music
of the wind in that discarded can was all that ever happened,
all that ever would. From the distant sand dunes I heard scattered shots
like a nervous, insistent thumbing through the Book of Life and Death,
My son’s barefoot steps when he was a baby were louder
than his heavy boots in the fine mealy Negev sand.
I want my son to be a soldier In the British army,
guarding a palace in the rain, A tall fur hat on his head—
everyone staring at him while, without moving a muscle,
he’s laughing Inside.