Reflection • June 20^th, 2014

watching the wall

 

walls built by them

through the middle of us

are not built to protect us from us,

but to protect them

from our coming to realize that

we

are

an

us.

 

walls between enemies might be shields

but walls

between people and their land,

between people and their water,

between people and their neighbors,

between people and the sunset,

are not meant to be shields

but

swords.

 

walls make poor shields

if they create more

enemies.

 

walls meant to divide must

unite us:

this wall

must

fall.

I wrote “Watching the Wall” in 2004 after my first trip to Palestine, in the West Bank. Actually, I the poem started forming itself in my mind while I was there, watching the wall being built by the Israelis in the middle of a boulevard in a Palestinian town. Years later, back at home:

Forbidden Anguish

January 2009 

So what am I supposed to do with this?

These tears?

These fears?

This rage?

So how am I supposed to not feel for her

being torn from her childhood,

then sealed into this tomb

and now at this very moment

– while a bird sings outside my window –

she’s being pounded

beaten

her grandchildren ripped from her arms

slaughtered from the sky

 

while I

– I’m told –

must just buy

into

this cotton candy kingdom

that’s supposed to be my life.

 

I

– I’m told –

should swallow the excuses

shoved into my face to soften their disgrace.

I’m warned not to offend

not to hint at the end of the dream built upon

the nightmare of her life.

 

But no –

I will let it out

I’m going to shout her name:

Gaza!

Gaza!

Gaza!

Gaza!

Gaza!

Gaza!

Gaza!

Gaza!

A half year later, I went to Gaza on a delegation. As we were crossing through the Rafa gate, we saw a crowd of Palestinians waiting who, when they saw our bus, held up their passports, letting us know that though we had finally been allowed to cross, they were not being allowed to return to their homes and families.

 

Travel Notes

July 2009

 

Do you think you could do that?

 

Could you pass through these gates

that slice up families

seeing this in the eyes of these people

waiting…

waiting…

waiting… ?

 

Could you come in here and hear

these three little girls

speak of their parents

and their sisters

and their brothers

and their cousins

killed

for being Palestinians?

 

Could you sit among these women

carrying photos of sons imprisoned

perhaps forever

whom they can’t visit

ever

knowing their 11,000 add up

on the world’s scale

to less than the one

taken and held

on the other side?

 

Could you look at this man

with the nice smile

but with no legs

knowing

that the forces that blew them off

have sealed the border shut

against wheelchairs

coming in?

 

Could you view these bullet-blasted holes

in wall after wall

or these piles of rubble:

concrete chunks with steel lines

projecting out

like a piece of the abstract art

of a madman?

 

Could you come here to Gaza

holding your eyes open

letting your ears channel in

the reality

which your plush life at home

denies you?

 

Could you do this,

Congressman,

and then walk back into those halls

and vote for more death and anguish?

Or

are you more human

than that?

And, no, he never responded.

I want to finish with a poem that I wrote for a friend of mine, but which I am reading for many friends: 

 

Of a Land with a People

It’s possible

it just occurred to me

that you already know.

 

Would they be, then

superfluous

all my arguments,

all my pleas

all my rantings

all my reaching into that place which

when touched

turns pain into the pearl of knowledge?

Would they be superfluous

if you already know?

 

Perhaps you know

but that knowledge is of a people wronged

and a people being wronged

by a people you learned to call “we.”

Worse

it’s of the precious Dream being

just maybe

wrong.

It is the Dream

of a magical place of healing

of a promised land of refuge

of a desert made to bloom by the sweat of your people.

 

(As if it had not been blooming for millennia.)

 

Perhaps this knowledge –

of children traumatized

of youth crushed

of parents anguished

of elders refusing to forget

– lurks within you

threatening to tear from you

your cherished bewilderment as to why

“those people” do

“those things.”

 

This knowledge might seed your action

in their defense.

But what value is there in knowledge if it’s enclosed

onion-like

within a spiritual flesh

nourished

layer by layer

year after year

to smother it

each layer crying out in pain

at the tearing?

 

My friend

I have no answers for you.

I’m sorry.