Day 97, Time Has Swallowed Time, January 12
time has swallowed time
night has swallowed day
past future merged
in a present of terror
the boa constrictor encircling our lives
has squeezed squeezed
building after building
hospital after hospital
bookshop after bookshop
body after body
methodically & blindly
demolish kill as widely
as possible
let the distressed birds fly away
not wanting to know anything
of this human world
somewhere a little
girl cries cries
& asks
if we collected all the tears
would it wash away the soot
resurrect the dead
would the birds come back?
_____
Note: Written during the ongoing war Israel launched against Gaza.
no remission
as toys
in the hands
of the Mighty
words
crushed mixed
for a long time
in mouths papers
and TV
We Arabs
citizens of a country
whose land was
swallowed by language
Absentees
Present absentees
floating with no remission
between sky & earth
______
Note: The land registry lists the property confiscated from Palestinians (land, houses, businesses, banks, and so forth) at the time of the creation of the State of Israel, distinguishing between two categories: “Absentees,” orPalestinians expelled or driven to flee by terror during the 1947–1948 war; and “Present Absentees,” Palestinians who remained but were dispossessed following the destruction of their (more than 500) villages and/or confiscations.
Poetic Art of Savagery
Everything is literature Pessoa said while asking
Translations, please
Savagery has imposed itself
the poetic art of Savagery
for how to say
This
so ugly so hard
a white-hot wound
/
if I could find the words I would say how among
the upheavals of history & great disasters
that followed through realizations of random
combinations of virtual & real particles
(for a time they sought a nest in Africa & Latin
America)
this other great disaster arose Supremacism
concealed in a Trojan horse named
Democracy
/
Definitions belong to the Definers/not the Defined
Toni Morrison said
prison existence in the eyes of missiles or
the sights of rifles
threatened with jail by edict of mandatory Empire
(on which the sun never sets…)
& dispossession by invocation of
Sultan’s name
If at dawn one morning
they left the village
and walked to reach
a place where no human
voice nor crowing cock
could be heard
then that
land would fall into
the hands of the
Sublime Porte
______
Notes: The Ottoman Land Code of 1858 is still used by the State of Israel to confiscate land lying fallow in response to the countless obstacles encountered by Palestinian farmers in accessing and cultivating it. Very often, this land is then handed over to illegal settlements in order to increase its size.
Sublime Porte: name formerly used in international relations to designate the Ottoman Empire.
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