local_library A Disappearing People

by Moshe Benarroch

Published in Issue No. 21 ~ February, 1999

I don’t know why
twenty years
I only meet crazy people
telling me that this is
the end of the jewish people
everything if this and that happens
will collapse
why I meet
prophets of disasters every day
and I forecast them
whole moons of bliss
why they always speak
about the vanishing jewish people
they were always vanishing
and I only see
immigrants and more immigrants
houses and more houses
roads and more roads
sons building cities
sons coming back to their borders.
Nobody knows were these frontiers are
growing and shortening
and after two thousand years of
exile
I wish ourselves
two thousand years of
borders.

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Moshe Benarroch was born in 1959 in Tetuan/Morocco, between Tangier and Gibraltar. He grew up in a mixture of cultures and languages, Spanish being his mother tongue, attending a French school, hearing the Arabic of the streets and praying in Hebrew. In 1972 He emigrated to Israel, and has lived since then in Jerusalem. Books he has had published in Hebrew include: The Immigrant's Lament (poetry - 1994), The Coming Book (prose - 1997), and The Bread And The Dream (poetry - 1998). His poems and prose have been published in numerous Israeli literary magazines. His international publication credits include: Ygdrasil, Revue Europe (France), Xero, Abiko Quarterly (Japan), and Poetry magazine. He is a contributing editor at Ygdrasil, where he has e-published a book of poetry titled Moben's Poems. Moshe's first novel Benshawen will be published in Hebrew later this year. A book of poems in Spanish, titled Esquina En Tetuán, published by Esquio (Spain), is forthcoming. He is scheduled to appear at the International Poetry Festival in Austin, TX, in April, 1999