Doikayt

          n. Hereness.
          n. Diaspora
          n. “the Yiddish concept… used to describe practices of political organizing and cultural activism
among Yiddishists and Jewish socialists especially during the interwar period.”

Hershberg, from the German, meaning “deer hill”
or “dear hill”, depending on animism’s sweetness.
Moved eastward, sloped downward phonetically
to Gershberg: Odessa, Baku, Syktyvkar, Brighton Beach.

And the Auerbachs: St. Petersburg, Tarnow,
Warsaw, Berlin, Krakow, Rzedzin, Plaszow,
[Oswiecem], Toulouse, Haifa. Then, yes,
Morningside Heights—a coupling.

Me, maternally: Lvov and Brody, Buda
and Pest, Mariupol—
Bay Ridge, Crown Heights, Grand
Concourse. Lower East Side.
And then with time,
how it opens geography,
if the money allows:
Adelphi, Norwalk, Fairfield, Stamford,
Silver Spring, Great Neck, Green Point,
Delray Beach, St. Paul, Minneapolis.

I find more Gershbergs in Buenos Aires,
go to Alejandro Guerschburg’s tango
concert. A bizarro history
in an accordion—
time klezmered,
slanted in minor.

My host family then: Almagro,
a mostly Jewish neighborhood.
They moved as mine did: through Europe

and the Atlantic—
Yiddishland to Avenida Peron,
though not “Peron” then but something
time and signage cover.

I live in Appalachia, consonant like Carpathia.

I till and plant in a new-old place
a home-weeded dill, a flavor of a home.

Jerusalem is—yes, always, it has been— a metaphor.

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