Nearly every town in Europe has one
- a Jewish quarter;* strange peoples
gathered and grew into enclaves
staging voluntary exile from environs
then a leprous walling in, then a winkling out
by fear, fire or persecutory decree
short notice, up-sticks banishment
always a dispersal, the call to another continent
dismissed as tribes, twelve of them
some lost, some found but nominal nomads
here one century, gone the next
moving on or melding into the brickwork
like the cement of a Sabbath ritual
Now in these petrified parts of the city**
we piece populations from a few upturned relics
inquisitive visitors peer where inquisitors trod
in pursuit of phantoms up and down careworn stones
along labyrinthine passages from a biblical age
I cannot go again and see such resurrections
cleaned and displayed
as though nothing happened here but a vanishing
© Laura Granby
*The Call (pronounced like pal) or Jewish Quarter in cities & settlements of Catalonia- from kahal or kehilla, Hebrew for community. See Network of Jewish Quarter in Spain
**This was Girona, Catalonia – In 1492, 200,000 Jews left Spain under The Spanish Expulsion
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