Al-Andalus Poem by gershon hepner

Al-Andalus not only proves
two cultures, Jewish and Islam,
can coexist-whatever moves
the branch that came from Abraham
can move the branch from Ibrahim-
but that this made them share the fate
of exile, victims of the whim
of men who wished to expurgate,
as from a book, all people in
the land who thought God had no son.
Despite their common origin,
convivienca was undone
exiled from Andalus, and now
its memory is mere mirage,
while to a different God they bow,
one by a Wall, one on a Haj.

Gabriel Josipovici reviews Peter Cole’s book The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain (“Found in Spain, ” TLS, November 23,2007) . Josipovici quotes from several poems, and concludes his review with an explanation of the book’s title:

Peter Cole and Gabriel Levin both live in Jerusalem and are joint editors of the flourishing little press called Ibis Editions, which has its aim to bring to the English-speaking reader the best literary work coming out of the Middle East, be it in Hebrew, Arabic, Turksih, French, or English. The title of Cole’s anthology is taken from a remark by the leading Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish: “Andalus…might have been here or there, or anywhere…A meeting place of strangers in the project of building human culture..It is not only that there was a Jewish-Muslim co-existence, but that the fates of the two people were similar…Al-Andalus for me is the realization of the dream of the poem.” One need not be a starry-eyed idealist to say: Hear, hear!


12/3/07