I am writing to the
Chinese Association for the Study
of Jewish Literature
They have asked for the addresses
of a couple of other Jews
Ozick and Kazin to be specific
Of course there are hundreds
probably thousands now alive
writing in Spanish and Portuguese
Russian even German the great languages
of nations into whose histories
we were admitted and began almost
immediately to talk exclaim praise
make metaphor despair raise children
ask questions of the authorities
in their own tongue! succeed multiply
and finally be driven out
They say a thousand Jews fled Bombay
in the 12th century traveled to
Kaifeng City to live in the center
of China to live to live ah into
the generations they disappeared
in the terrible Yahweh-defying act
of assimilation