“Between Halifax and Bradford”
Atar Hadari
Art of Creative Unity Award 2020 | Honorable Mention
Between Halifax and Bradford I say my prayers
In the corridor of the compartment
Swaying as I stand, never caught unawares
Of the slowing of the brakes as we turn at each abutment.
Who do you pray to at ten to nine
In Yorkshire among the workers?
Would it be better at ten to eight
In the small prayer-house with the pensioners
Who do not have to run to work
Or must be there for a kaddish?
Would it be the same to go speak in the field
Over the heads of sheep to the great harvest?
We say our prayers to whoever hears –
And if a great tree falls, sapling stalls and starts to tumble,
Nobody knows the name of who chopped
The limbs into finest sawdust.
Only between Halifax and Bradford
I find the time to squeeze out
Nineteen blessings while standing on the balls
of my feet, waiting for the sky to turn radiant.
It rarely does, only the grey steel walls
Gleam yellow by fluorescent
And every time I say the Name
The wheels cry out a descant
And scream when I try to frame my own requirement.
The Muslims come on at Bradford
And I wonder if in their millions
They are the only ones today who know
God watches them and their opinions?
God comes walking down the aisle
With a ticket machine after Bradford,
Waves at every boy and girl
And takes a bite out of every bit of cardboard.
We leave the train to the sound of clouds
Skirmishing over the tin roof,
Day pilgrims run from Leeds
All the way back to the gulf coast,
While Jews continue dreaming of a lost
Never to be recaptured lily-white Jerusalem
And Muslims bow in every shopping mall
Toward the East in mosques unmarked
By any vestige of relief or ritual-
Just a basin to wash hands, a wall,
A place to leave your shoes in.
And sometimes I go there to pray
And no one asks me why I stand and sway
And do not bow to anything.
Just a room in a mall, not identified as immaterial
But I and they go there to pray
And it does not matter the day or time or even reason.