ONE COUNTRY ONE GOD ONE FLAG
This land belongs to you and me
Its fertile plains, its rivers swift and free
To hungry jealous eyes we now proclaim
This country echoes to our name
Many of the houses here have been rebuilt. That one over there without a roof,
walls pockmarked by bullet holes is how most of them looked after the war. On one side of the road lived the Serbs, on the other, the Croats. Children who went to school together killed members of each others families; some bodies have still not been found, over there is the cemetery.
Our God belongs to you and me
All imposters before him must bend a knee
And to heathen voices that besmirch his name
Our God all infidels shall maim
The Tutsis came and murdered all the male Hutus in the village. Women girls as young as eight were raped before they were slaughtered and thrown into the lake. The water was so full of blood that we couldn’t eat the fish for years. Under that grove of trees was discovered recently a mass grave, over three hundred bodies. It is not certain whether some of them were burnt alive.
This flag belongs to you and me
Its lines, its stars, its colors proud and free
God save out flag, our proud refrain
And History’s graveyard other flags can shame
This wall is all that remains of the temple. The mosque with the golden dome, El Aktsa, was built was built over the place where the holiest of holies stood. This is Jaffa street, that shop over there has been wrecked three times by buses that were blown up by suicide bombers. My brother in law helps with the bomb squad, his job is to gather all the body parts and pieces of flesh splattered on the pavements, on the walls. This helps to identify the victims and also gives their families the comfort of having as much as possible of their loved ones to bury.
This land belongs to you and me
Its fertile plains, its rivers swift and free
To hungry jealous eyes we now proclaim
This country echoes to our name
WATERS OF GAZA
They moved out of Gaza
not without protest, not without prayer
feeling like ivy ripped off the walls
like irrigation pipes torn from the soil
they moved out on unwilling legs
on buses to nowhere
fathers, mothers, children
and children without fathers
without mothers
They moved into Gaza
not without covet, not without envy
feeling like water released from a dam
bursting into surrendering fields
carrying all before it, trees, houses
places of prayer, fences, gardens
waves breaking over alien temples
again and again till water covered all
After the water came briny hatred
lusting for a redder liquid
and the skies darkened again
lightening and thunder returned to Gaza
rained on this thin strip of unhappiness
writhing between the wrath of history
and the dark depths of the sea
REFUGEE FROM HOME
Anxiety trembles her brow
a thousand concerns
the children, the war, the cat’s medicine
lost somehow in the move
The rockets raining their daily toll
Twisted girders, masonry rubble
measuring those dead, those wounded
her mountain forest, home of flowers and love
burnt, blackened, oozing smoke
The hot water boiler, had she turned it off?
Now, the town she had fled
lies empty, its back bare to the flail
of the whips lashing again and again
onto bleeding flesh of streets
blood running down the mountainside
past the fast food places all padlocked
a crow attempting to pull a fragment
of flesh glued by heat to sidewalk
Little Sara had caught some infection
temperature rising in the humid hotel room
television blaring siren warnings
a growing battlefield of angry red blotches
crawling across her back, arms, abdomen
Each morning there was a new crop –
Kiryat Shmone, Shlomi, Acre, Safed,
Nazareth, Haifa. The doctor said it was a virus
antiiotics would not help
An announcer read the names of the soldiers
killed in yesterday’s fighting. She stopped breathing,
breathed again – no-one she knew.
Baby started fretting, she turned to nurse him
watched his lips pucker around her nipple until
satisfied, he fell asleep
An excited voice explained how to
get a mortgage within an hour.
Fires still burned in the forests above her town
yellowish smoke engulfing most of the northern
neighborhoods. She wondered again whether
she had been right to insist on a divorce.
Where was he now? Conscripted? Thinking of her?
She tried to sleep again, couldn’t, her mind
coming back to the hot water boiling away at nothing,
all that electricity wasted…
Soon, a week, two weeks, a month, it would
be over and she would go home and turn it off.
NIGHT TRAIN FROM BEIRUT
I’m looking across the ploughed furrows
to where the rushing worms roar
in the night, galloping, eating up the
distances in a wind of boxes
churning on hoarse metal clicks
each box a lantern parade of yellow
flickering rectangles, flowing past
midnight, inside each rectangle another
smaller one, screen to the world
coming and going from
nowhere to hope
The old train from Beirut to Cairo
stopped running decades ago
beheaded by the axe of history.
Today, a gaping one-eyed tunnel carries
its memory across the border,
its mesmerized cargo of silks and spices
its maroon fez-wearing compliment of
ticket inspectors, kahwa and salep vendors,
bankers and merchants, khaki clad
world travelers, sesame crunching
schoolchildren returning to Alexandria
after a lazy Lebanese summer
The image is so bright, I snap it
in my mind, but in the morning
when the shadowy hulks emerge
dripping from the developing fluid
all I get is a row of tanks and troop carriers
…and the ironic laughter
of middle eastern reality
MORNING AT THE SHUK
Did you notice how plump the avocados are this year
and how perfect, each with its tiny green label of origin
and how the persimmons are stacked like soldiers
piled orange with love, quite unlike the Hermon apples
their riotous undisciplined rosy hues
fresh from the Lebanese border smelling of
tractors and mountain air?
Did you pause and watch the children’s clothes man
proudly folding T-shirts decorated with the latest
fashionable appliques rubbing shoulders with
jeans from China and Indian sharwals?
Did you see how carefully the mothers inspect
each garment, checking for hidden flaws or untidy stitching?
Ah yes, I suppose you did.
Did you notice how the herring man
never seems to get older and how red the matjes
looks – probably dyed with beetroot juice?
Did you know that the real shmaltz herring
is hidden in the refrigerator – you have to be
a feinshmeker to know that and anyway its
Ramadan month now and mid-morning.
Yet I know why you stopped at the cheese stall
not to let your eyes hunger on fragrant
white and creamy cubes
not to steal an olive from the green or black pile
but because the cheese man works slowly, lovingly,
offering free-taste slivers to undecided housewives
before slipping fragrant portions into heat-sealed bags.
So there was quite a long queue that morning
when you pulled the cord that rocked the market
splashing meaty chunks of you over all that white
killing three patient ladies and wounding thirty others
The president was re-elected the following week
and promised to fight terrorism to the end
but of course, you couldn’t have known that.
AFTER THE ELECTION
Pre-dawn lies over the city
In a blanket of mist winking
Here and there from red to green and back
Ships in the bay lie anchored
In faint pools of light hardly breathing
The sounds of their ocean journeys
Waves lap slow, swish back to sleep
Against the edge of wakefulness
On the wharf the bins are empty
The last eyeless fish heads have been picked
By crows or carried off by cats to be eaten
At midnight in some guarded gutter
Under streets the presses rumble, print
And fold as stacks are packed away
A new president has been chosen
Eighty Four if he’s a day
And in the pages mount the questions
Can he last the term or nay
The traffic lights blink on and off
Ships slumber, cats rest on garbage heaps
In seven years nothing will change
The docks, the wharf, the cats will remain
A PASS FOR JOHANNES
The wind from the mine dumps
blew down Commissioner street
whirling yellow-brown eddies into the
cracks of the closed doors of OK Bazaars
on days like this the shopping district
was almost deserted, its streets laid out
emptily like the grid of a crossword puzzle,
waiting for the white squares to fill up
between the few wandering blacks
Our smiling black servant was on his day off
visiting his girlfriend in the township
I, fifteen years old, had written his pass
on a squared page torn from my arithmetic book
it said ‘please pass native Johannes Laka to Sophiatown
to return to Greenside by Wednesday morning 8 am’,
if the police picked him up without a pass he would
spend a month in the tronk
It was the Queen’s coronation day and I
was walking home ten miles to prove to myself
and to my friend Hilton Olowitz I could do it and
listening to snatches of pomp drifting from
open windows. Hilton said that if I kicked a
cool drink can all the way from Hillbrow to
Greenside, I might get into the Guinness
Book of Records. I didn’t believe him but
I’d do it anyway just for kicks
It was the summer of nineteen fifty three
the gap in the ozone layer had not yet been discovered
and Nelson Mandela was not yet on Robben Island
eating his mealie pap and writing his memoirs.
The winds of change had still to begin to blow,
life was good, it never occurred to me to question
why I didn’t need a pass
WAR GAMES
For some
it was merely a game
of rectangles and positions
of lines and borders
A child’s baize field
bedecked with lead soldiers
cavalry, cannon and bayonet
with camouflage
toppled pieces
shouting crawling
broken figures
flags on sticks
of gains and losses
packed away
in cardboard boxes
at close of day
Yet here and there
on gray days
in Columbine, Red Lake
Rocori, Maalot,
plastic heroes
left unpacked at dusk
by ignorance
method
misplaced revenge
or glory
rise while others slumber
to litter battlefields
real and imagined
with corpses
and burnt wreckage
that no amount
of plastic cement
or hunting under
furniture and beds
on dream forsaken dawns
could ever discover
or repair
TO PROTECT MY HOME
There’s a fence
atop a wall
around the garden
that surrounds my home
There’s a wall
within the fence
and there are wires
above the wall
around the garden
that surrounds my home
There’s a fire
licking over the wall
over the fence
burning the garden
that surrounds my home
There are eyes
behind the wall
that light the fires
that melt the wires
that blacken the walls
that burn the trees
in the garden
that surrounds my home
And so I flee
flee from the flames
that blacken the walls
flee from the fires
that surround my home
Flee to a new land
flee to a desert
flee to a valley
beneath a mountain
to rebuild my home
There are eyes
inside the mountain
eyes that glint from treetops
eyes that lust from caverns
and so I build a higher barrier
to surround my home
THE LAST GOOD DAY
The day before, a cool morning breeze
had come in at the window
full of slow rain sounds and other clichés
it was comforting to believe that
all was right with the world
the cat was having a serious munch
at his biscuits and your warm
flank crept into the hollow of my
thighs, your hand whispered good day
it was the day before you left
yesterday, there was no seven-o-clock news
no traffic swish from an empty
highway, no thud of the daily newspaper
on the doorstep, it was Yom Kippur
the Day of Atonement and the rain
inside me the only witness that our
fragile soap bubble of contentment
had split open like a stinging tear
today, lightning shrieked across my sky
ripping open heaven’s umbrella
thunder rumbled around upstairs
like an angry parent
and a torrent of vicious retribution
beat suddenly, shockingly down on the world
I turn to hold you but you are gone
bubble rent, racing across the horizon
in a gray whirlwind, and I after you
in a thunderclap illuminating the trees
on the hilltop, standing there agape
between two shudders of the second hand,
I hear the crack of automatic fire,
see the flash, feel the savage thudding blows,
taste the wet earth
They came to my door,
those ghosts in pressed khaki
came to my door in slow
motion… came to my door..
I didn’t need their sad serious faces
didn’t see their salutes
they sent you back in a box
but I was still down there
in the wet earth
whispering good day, good day
THE LAST SURVIVOR
Nina stands on the surface of time
mind swollen with waves
little fish dance in reflections of clouds
in a grotto eating into the cliff eroding
decades, centuries turning the deep
blue water dark and pregnant
Nina dives in like a slim blade
a slicing of silver, now underwater
thinking out into plunging ocean shores
where liquid molecules carry messages
Nina recognizes: kettle drums – tuna and swordfish
mooing from a lost whale child,
flute and piccolo blips, hieroglyphics
from a school of sporting dolphins
and – from far in the deep, a faint Morse
message repeated in a pattern of waning despair
Nina listens through time, echoes break up in the swell
whale child finds its mother, moos turn to suckling
Nina thrusts down into the years, looking for
she knows not what, a survivor perhaps
someone to talk to
The skies above roil purple, atomic fires still
smolder in city ruins, no voices in the crackles
even the crows have deserted here
highways stretch dark directions, no traffic, no carrion
Only the deeps contain life, groping and squirming
Nina dives again thinking wishing hoping
so she dives and listens, dives and listens,
he must be out there somewhere
listening too for an unseen new beginning
But only the fish remain – and the echo of a message
breaking up in the deep
TWO WOMEN
The woman in the village parted the curtains
and watched the youth walk halfway up the hill
a little way up from the houses with the tin roofs
not knowing whether to heed the pride in her bosom
or the rivulet of tears flowing from her eyes
Up the hill he met a man with a thick black beard
whose eyes glimmered like coals
whose arms were knotted and corded
and whose lips spoke of paradise she watched them
the tall youth was her first born and pride of her heart
Many years she had nursed him and clothed him
he who had shed not a tear when he fell from the mount
watched him grow tall and straight as the trees on the hill
taught him the words of the prophet the ways of the book
Why had they come, she thought, those others
who spoke strange words wore strange clothes
sang strange melodies and worshipped a strange god
why oh why had they come to claim this soil as their own
had it not been given to our ones for eternity?
But now was no time for wondering
now was the time for action and resistance
tomorrow her long limbed youth would rise early
say his prayers shave dress take up his pack and go to the city
And when he reached the city he would walk head held high
to the bus stop climb the few short stairs buy his ticket
and move to the center of the bus
and when the bus was filled with fathers on their way to work
with mothers on the way to the marketplace, with children
on their way to school, he would tug the cord that ran down inside
his clothing setting off the holy bomb that would kill seventeen of them
wound forty three more, four of whom would later die of their wounds,
smatter pieces of his own flesh and theirs over thirty meters of sidewalk
The woman in the city parted the curtains
waited for her tall youth to descend the hill
but today the bus was late and she felt a flutter in her breast
The radio on the shelf started up with the news…
THE FIRING SQUAD
They filed in blindfolded
stood akimbo to the wall
the words
Blesseds dropped in the first salvo
then kings, altars, promises,
sins, obedience,
disobedience stood for a while
bullets whistling by
then it dropped too
Most adjectives and adverbs
simply exploded of their own accord
as did many nouns of the higher sphere
abstractions, inventions, musings,
articles, conjunctions
and the like
When the smoke cleared
and the stage was swept
only the most stalwart
nouns and verbs
were left standing
‘Let’s write an epitaph for them’
said eyes to hat
lips smiled
‘let’s paint a picture’
‘something abstract and meaningful
like a Picasso’
suggested nose
and was shot immediately
After their blindfolds were removed
the rest of them sat down
with crayons and finger paint
and started to work
THE DAY BEFORE
Time’s river’s running out
each note as clear as water
a piano that has twenty fingers
plays a last duet
with evening as it drifts in my window
accompanying the song
Someone there across the waves,
across the sky is playing
from the other end of the world
I can’t see his face
but I think he knows I’m here
Listening to him
I can feel it in his music
and when I try
I can almost smell the rose
that sits in the vase up on his sill
Can almost hear his children playing
can almost see his garden
through the window
hear his front door slowly open
see his eyes turn from the notes
as he smiles her a greeting
Time’s river’s running out
and I wonder whether
if I put my finger in the dike
will the music remain?
SLIME GREEN EXODUS
A slime green wind blows granules of sand
through jagged glassless door frames
a shutter hanging from its post
cries lonely against the wall
a notice curling on a magnet shaped like a cat
moulds on a refrigerator door
next to an invitation to a birthday party
Words fade from slime green paper
a page torn off…
”A meeting to discuss the situation
will be held in the school hall on Monday”
Generations of slime green ice
creep in, cover the date
stretch outside to the green horizon
A slime green axle slows
in a rusted wheel