the long black coat

By Diane Greenberg

Deeply personal poems evoking universal themes through a life centred in Jerusalem and reaching out to embrace other cultures, English countryside, a childhood in Wales and roots in Eastern Europe.

This is a collection of poems written over thirty years, gathered into sections

• Language: English
• Publisher: Belliers Books
• Release date: Mar 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781739737511

Diane Greenberg

Diane Greenberg grew up in Wales and earned a degree in American and Hebrew literature from Manchester University. She has lived with her family in Jerusalem since 1975, working as a free lance journalist while bringing up her four children. Diane was a founding member of the progressive Efrata School and of Kehillat Yedidya, a religious community committed to feminism within orthodoxy. At the same time, she's been actively involved in dialogues with the Palestinians.Diane has published a novel, Binding Memories, and in 2007, having submitted an award winning poem was invited to spend a month in St. Petersburg at the Summer Literary Festival. She writes fiction and poetry and has given a public reading from her chapbook, Leaving. For the past twenty years, Diane has been teaching prose and poetry writing to small groups, and some of her students have themselves published their work.

Book preview

the long black coat

poems by

Diane Greenberg

all rights reserved

© Diane Greenberg 2022

the right of Diane Greenberg

to be identified as author of this work

in accordance with section 77 of the

Copyright Designs & Patents Act 1988

has been asserted in accordance

with section 78 of the Act

published 2022

by Belliers Books

13 Belliers Close, St Ives

Cornwall TR26 2GP England

ISBN 978 1 7397375 1 1

for our grandchildren in hope

Contents

Forewords

Part I — the long black coat

seventy in Paris

this time

good night Vienna

who did you leave behind

found family

you don’t tell me everything

Tel Aviv — for Noam

wet sand

on the beaches

November sea

Part II — becoming

acceptance?

at thirteen days

composition

in the moment

on leave

pale washed-out colours

I try on a hat

new group

a Monet hill

innocence

what we remember

the kitchen

clearing up

layers

in the Irish pub

Part III — expectations

utterly alive

Rosh Hashanah

Yom Kippur — 19th September 2018

the canal

three columns

bookcase

grey day

inside the Ashmolean

decamped

threads of good

for N

intercession

what a day

baubles of glistening light

Part IV — witnesses

democratic rights

Hulot Seder

the wilderness

Masaryk Café

inching across the clear junction

Museu Picasso de Barcelona

parabolic

Birch Tor

Tel Aviv beach — 23rd October 2000

Izdarechet

never ending

Jop Mauwes at Schouwberg

sitting in the chair

Part V — India

Swiss Cottages

Lakshman Jhula

a bend on the Ganges

a rainbow

train to Pathankot

night train

tin roofs of Shivili

McLeod Ganj

fragile

tall trees

to Kempty Falls

Dr Paniker when you telephoned

Part VI — pictures

St David’s

that summer

Luke Bedford’s ‘Instability’

a bomb has exploded in a café

Phyllis’s broken down shoes

the weathered grave

and the naming

Barcelona

boulevard Strasbourg

unsettled in Jerusalem

pictures from the past

Part VII — ephemeral

American notes

army induction

another decade

November in Paris

it snowed

the Serpentine

in the Marinsky

through the telephone

brit

Part VIII — leaving Oxford

bridlepath

organ in college

All Souls

leaving Oxford

folded field

a florentine or a chocolate eclair?

Welsh valet

I didn’t throw them out

old Khan

Tel Aviv Marina

new day

Part IX — Amsterdam and back

away

Winkels

landmarks

turmoil

Gaza

redemption

call up

demons

Karl

halfway through

Part X — to Paris again

I come from Jerusalem to Paris

staked

obelisks

opposite Pont Neuf

late morning

lighter

gone

half a life

delivery room

Part XI — and Oxford

Hidcote

a boat ride to Iffley

Oxford

the next day

Sheikh Jarrah

Giacometti in Jerusalem

street terror

destruction

tantrums tarnish

in the park

Part XII — departures

the empty cemetery

on the same day

October 2010

Evensong Christchurch

sycamores

remembering charoset

on loan

July thirteenth 2015

no due date

release

Part XIII — backwards and forwards

too choppy to take the ferry to the island

Ardalanish

21st January 2001

the night after the elections

Phyllis’s niece

twenty years on

breakfast in Valetta

backwards

Bleu d’Auvergne

flying

Part XIV — Norway nowhere elsewhere

arrival in Oslo

not a mountain goat

Håkonshallen Bergen

Nærøyfjord

Troldhaugen

March 2002 — Jerusalem

in the theatre

I cannot plant today

Peru

last night’s eclipse

another generation

across from Tzfat

Plage Beau Rivage

Part XV — recognition

Meriden

kettles and pans

December rain

reserve duty

fie!

Café Parnas, Prague

the Jewish Girls School, 11-13 Auguststrasse Berlin

Yael

night

Part XVI — wonder

absorption

a down note

decluttering

we never thought

Annecy

Cromer pier

in the Hula

the parting

January

a new great-niece

last afternoon

Part XVII — suspended

the wedding canopy of your smile

hay bales

in the Botanic Garden

thunder wind and rain

Isle-sur-la-Sorgue

Solfach

induction — 12th January 2000

Carol

Hula

the Heath

away by the sea

Part XVIII — sustained

Amen

last day of the year

carrilleras de ternera

Gucci glasses

in the bath

corruption

there

Elham Valley

New Forest

Friday 5th April 2001

acknowledgements

Forewords

From the beginning, I was drawn to words — words tell stories. I remember writing in a soft brown notebook in Marlborough Road Infants School in Cardiff. There I was, six or seven years old, facing the empty whiteness of the page with no faint lines interrupting — I could explore and map that open space with words. Today, I cherish a blank page whenever I want to disclose my thoughts.

Poetry — the writing began about thirty years ago, in the 1990’s. Our eldest child was to be inducted into the army and, even after seventeen years of living in Jerusalem, I was appalled at the prospect of this child being taught to use a gun. A third novel was stuck, though the characters remain in a waiting room in my mind.

Quite by accident, I wrote a poem, discovering that this was — and it continues to be — a wondrous form of expressing what I am thinking, observing, hating, fearing and loving. Oh, to reveal and convey in a few lines and not over the course of a chapter the words I seek and struggle to find; they transform and become a rare moment of light.

Behold — a poem.

At the same instant, I know I am wholly alive.

This collection grew from a friendship with an Israeli-German, Yael Jenner, who had seen and judged good and evil behaviour; she was a moral compass, critical of the Occupation, a companion at demonstrations, though she attended far more than I did. Yael was also concerned about my appearance — would look across the dinner table and suggest a haircut! She had a musical voice — sitting beside her at Saturday morning synagogue services I could imagine the Lieder she must have sung as a young girl. One time she politely informed me that I must go to Europe properly dressed. My long black student coat had worn out so she loaned me another. Who knows if wearing this influenced my solo wanderings? My impulse to investigate, initiate, pursue an understanding of something I could not at first put