Two Jerusalems

Two Jerusalems there are,

one above and one below;

double-named as double star,

one a celestial entrepôt,

while for the other nations fight,

a humble threshing floor before

selected as a temple site

where earthmen still to heaven soar.

Bejeweled with two diadems,

fabulous their finery,

both of these Jerusalems

beckon to us, binary,

the one on earth a mere sideshow

for that above it, though the lever

to raise the one that lies below

is heaven’s ultimate endeavor.

As double, double, was the toil

of dwarves in Snow White—there were seven!—

Jerusalem’s most holy soil,

of which just half is inside heaven,

makes many troubled people pray

to be its sole proprietors,

their sins not white as snow, but gray,

irreligious rebel rioters.

Inspired by a poem by Yehuda Amichai  alluding to the Hebrew word for Jerusalem which implies that there are a pair of Jerusalems: 

Why is Jerusalem always two, the one above, the one below,

and I want to be in the one in the middle,

without knocking my head above and injuring my foot below,

and why is Jerusalem a double word like hands and legs?

I only want to be in one Jerusalem

because I am only one, not two.

Punning bilingually, I would like—with humorous topicality—to point out that when Jews pray several times a day for God to rebuild Jerusalem, the word בונה, boneh, meaning “He builds,” in the phrase  ירושלים  בונה ברחםיו,  boneh,  He builds, Jerusalem with His mercy, implies that Jerusalem is destined to be a binary city.