This poem is taken from PN Review 171, Volume 33 Number 1, September - October 2006.
'Scattering' and Two PoemsScattering
1
In the lands of Sepharad, on the river Tagus:
a town the colour of biscuit, a long horizon,
smooth, bare mountains, and beyond
the desert and a white sliver of moon.
It is the limestone city of Toledo, where
the Jews settled after Jerusalem
– silversmiths, traders, basket makers, scholars –
and Spain at first was happy to receive them.
In a Golden Age of restored hope:
houses were built with fountains in the courtyard;
men in their book-lined studies were translators
who brought the Greeks through Arabic to Europe.
But when they had to leave, with frightened eyes,
they bartered a house for a donkey,
a vineyard for a piece of cloth,
...
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