When I Return From War

It’s still here, the mean bank of the river.
That’s where I grew up.
Raised by my grandma and my grandpa.
My whole childhood I listened to horrible stories.
That taught me respect.
Those stories and terror I used to feel
walking down the street.
Sometimes I would hear distant echoes
of some pointless desperate battle,
would sense the stench
that flame-throwers leave behind.
And only the smell of wet dough
in my grandma’s kitchen
would bring me back to reality
that each time looked more and more yellow
like that Mitteleuropean sky.
In fact those young Israeli pilgrims
are really horrible.
They stumble in drunken rage over that place with so much sadness.
The sadness I haven’t been able to shake off my whole life.
My girlfriends, the stewardesses, all tell me
that the worst flights to work on
are those from Tel Aviv to Warsaw.
You hear no kaddish, just burping and drunken cussing.
Oh, those Israeli youth in Zamenhof Street
always used to creep me out.
Every time after they left,
leaving behind the smell of alcohol,
heaps of trash and cigarette buts,
just like in my childhood I would
hear the distant echoes
of some pointless desperate battle.