in blessing...

And the blessings kept overflowing from it until you children grew up...

— Then the chest went dry before our faces, Mother?!

— May your faces be kept safe for me, my darling... your faces are the faces of plenty in my house. But you deserted this land, my son... for the city.

And I stayed alone... and the land lay fallow...

It will overflow with plenty when your father comes home.

— And why does my father not come home, Mother?

— The sea bears us old grudges, my son, and America — her heart is of iron...

Her water is harsh and dry...

Write to him to come home...

There is tenderness in your letters, my son...

Write to him...

And in my mother's breast there were chokings of grief; I saw them brim over in her eyes...

...And on the quay of the harbor, I met my father...

He came back one day with the sea...

The sea took him from us in his violent prime, in his fiercest vigor, in the confident stride...

And one day the sea gave him back to us other than as it had taken him...

...And on the road that brought us to the village, my father passed by our ancient oaks...

His eyes were devouring the soil of our vineyards along the path...

Here, every grain of soil knows my father, and my father knows it.

He lived all his youth with it... all of it turned to jewels in his palms...

My father made jewels of it, that it might become treasures in our house...

Here... everything used to know my father, and my father knew it...

All of it was reared in the love of his heart and the bounty of his young strength...

And I heard — I heard in my father's breast something great and mighty pounding...

His heart was pounding as if it would tear his breast apart...

And my father asked me about the ancient oak he had not found along the road.

I said: We burned it for firewood and charcoal, Father, to keep off the cold in the city — so Mother says...

And my father rubbed the fingers of his hands together, as though there were ice in his palms...

...And at the house my father had built for us before he sailed, my father drew himself toward the garden...

And I was at his side, studying the lines of his face...

And he went around the garden, from tree to tree...

The seeds he had pressed into the earth had become tall trees...

The little saplings... had grown old, and he would gather their leaves to his breast...

And he pulled me by the hand... Where is the jujube tree? I planted it with my own hand...

— Over there, Father, at the far end of the garden... We ate from it often, and my children and my brother's children eat from it still...

— And the almond tree... it was here; I still remember that I planted it here...

— The storm broke it, Father. The storms at our house are dreadful; you built the house for us on the shoulder of the valley... and in our valley the storms are frightening... And before the storm broke it, we ate of its life and remembered you, as you bade us.

— And the eastern balcony... from which we used to look out over the back of the ridge?

— It came down one night... we rose in the morning and found it on the ground.

— And the red arbor?

— A cursed worm gnawed it through, and it died. And the great wheat chest, Father, is empty; there is no grain in it... Mother said it would overflow with plenty when you came home... Tomorrow it will overflow with plenty...

And in my father's eyes were great tears, which he let roll down his wrinkled cheeks.

...

And when my father gathered us to his breast — all of us, my mother and my brothers and I... I felt that our house had filled with plenty, and through my tears I saw the almond tree come back young to the garden... and blossom... and the sparrows came back to it... Never again will the almond tree grow old...

And we shall eat from it often.

And I saw... through my tears, the red grapevine, heavy with clusters. It had turned green again, as if it had never known despair.

All the blessings came back to our house...

I wonder — why did my father not ask me about the moon that was ours, above the grapevine?

1948