THE PALESTINIANS HAVE GIVEN UP PARTIES
Once singing would rise
in sweet sirens over the hills
and even if you were working
with your trees or books
or cooking something simple
for your own family,
you washed your hands,
combed water through your hair.
Mountains of rice, shiny shoes,
a hurricane of dancing.
Children wearing little suitcoats
and velvet dresses fell asleep in circles
after eating 47 Jordan almonds.
Whoâs getting married? Whoâs come home
from the far place over the seas?
Sometimes you didnât even know.
You ate all that food without knowing.
Kissed both cheeks of anybody who passed,
slapping the drum, reddening your palm.
Later you were full, rich,
with a party in your skin.
Where does fighting
come into this story?
Fighting got lost from somewhere else.
It is not what we like: to eat, to drink,
to fight
.
Now when the students gather quietly
inside their own classroom
to celebrate the last day of school,
the door to the building
gets blasted off.
Empty chairs where laughter used to sit.
Laughter lived here
jingling its pocket of thin coins
and now it is hiding.
It will not come to the door dressed as a soapseller,
a peddler of matches, the old Italian
from the factory in Nablus
with his magic sack of sticks.
They have told us we are not here
when we were always here
.
Their eraser does not work
.
See the hand-tinted photos of young men:
too perfect, too still.
The bombs break everyoneâs
sentences in half.
Who made them? Do you know anyone
who makes them?
The ancient taxi driver
shakes his head back and forth
from Jerusalem to Jericho.
They will not see, he says slowly,
the story behind the story,
they are always looking for the story after the story
which means they will never understand the story.
Which means it will go on and on.
How can we stand it if it goes on and on?
It is too long already
.
No one even gets a small bent postcard
from the far place over the seas anymore.
No one hears the soldiers come at night
to pluck the olive tree from its cool sleep.
Ripping up roots. This is not a headline
in your country or mine.
No one hears the tiny sobbing
of the velvet in the drawer.
HALF-AND-HALF
You canât be, says a Palestinian Christian
on the first feast day after Ramadan.
So, half-and-half and half-and-half.
He sells glass. He knows about broken bits,
chips. If you love Jesus you canât love
anyone else. Says he.
At his stall of blue pitchers on the Via Dolorosa,
heâs sweeping. The rubbed stones
feel holy. Dusting of powdered sugar
across faces of date-stuffed
mamool
.
This morning we lit the slim white candles
which bend over at the waist by noon.
For once the priests werenât fighting
in the church for the best spots to stand.
As a boy, my father listened to them fight.
This is partly why he prays in no language
but his own. Why I press my lips
to every exception.
A woman opens a windowâhere and here and hereâ
placing a vase of blue flowers
on an orange cloth. I follow her.
She is making a soup from what she had left
in the bowl, the shriveled garlic and bent bean.
She is leaving nothing out.
BUTTER BOX
To close: Fold in small end flaps. Insert Flap A
into Flap B as shown
.
There is a picture to help us.
Also an announcement:
Carton has been opened
.
In case we are stumbling through an afternoon,
have lost our way, or plate and knife confound us.
Once a plastic bag intoned:
There should be a suggestion
of firmness in the cooked macaroni
. Not entirely firm,
not utterly anything, just a
suggestion
.
But I donât want to close the butter box
with the butter in it. Place a single brick
in the pink dish, extra three
stacked in waiting, box discarded.
See how much help we didnât need?
SMOKE
The new slash of road curves up beside five sleeping smokestacks.
Four stand together, one apartâthe lucky or the lonely one,
Once singing would rise
in sweet sirens over the hills
and even if you were working
with your trees or books
or cooking something simple
for your own family,
you washed your hands,
combed water through your hair.
Mountains of rice, shiny shoes,
a hurricane of dancing.
Children wearing little suitcoats
and velvet dresses fell asleep in circles
after eating 47 Jordan almonds.
Whoâs getting married? Whoâs come home
from the far place over the seas?
Sometimes you didnât even know.
You ate all that food without knowing.
Kissed both cheeks of anybody who passed,
slapping the drum, reddening your palm.
Later you were full, rich,
with a party in your skin.
Where does fighting
come into this story?
Fighting got lost from somewhere else.
It is not what we like: to eat, to drink,
to fight
.
Now when the students gather quietly
inside their own classroom
to celebrate the last day of school,
the door to the building
gets blasted off.
Empty chairs where laughter used to sit.
Laughter lived here
jingling its pocket of thin coins
and now it is hiding.
It will not come to the door dressed as a soapseller,
a peddler of matches, the old Italian
from the factory in Nablus
with his magic sack of sticks.
They have told us we are not here
when we were always here
.
Their eraser does not work
.
See the hand-tinted photos of young men:
too perfect, too still.
The bombs break everyoneâs
sentences in half.
Who made them? Do you know anyone
who makes them?
The ancient taxi driver
shakes his head back and forth
from Jerusalem to Jericho.
They will not see, he says slowly,
the story behind the story,
they are always looking for the story after the story
which means they will never understand the story.
Which means it will go on and on.
How can we stand it if it goes on and on?
It is too long already
.
No one even gets a small bent postcard
from the far place over the seas anymore.
No one hears the soldiers come at night
to pluck the olive tree from its cool sleep.
Ripping up roots. This is not a headline
in your country or mine.
No one hears the tiny sobbing
of the velvet in the drawer.
HALF-AND-HALF
You canât be, says a Palestinian Christian
on the first feast day after Ramadan.
So, half-and-half and half-and-half.
He sells glass. He knows about broken bits,
chips. If you love Jesus you canât love
anyone else. Says he.
At his stall of blue pitchers on the Via Dolorosa,
heâs sweeping. The rubbed stones
feel holy. Dusting of powdered sugar
across faces of date-stuffed
mamool
.
This morning we lit the slim white candles
which bend over at the waist by noon.
For once the priests werenât fighting
in the church for the best spots to stand.
As a boy, my father listened to them fight.
This is partly why he prays in no language
but his own. Why I press my lips
to every exception.
A woman opens a windowâhere and here and hereâ
placing a vase of blue flowers
on an orange cloth. I follow her.
She is making a soup from what she had left
in the bowl, the shriveled garlic and bent bean.
She is leaving nothing out.
BUTTER BOX
To close: Fold in small end flaps. Insert Flap A
into Flap B as shown
.
There is a picture to help us.
Also an announcement:
Carton has been opened
.
In case we are stumbling through an afternoon,
have lost our way, or plate and knife confound us.
Once a plastic bag intoned:
There should be a suggestion
of firmness in the cooked macaroni
. Not entirely firm,
not utterly anything, just a
suggestion
.
But I donât want to close the butter box
with the butter in it. Place a single brick
in the pink dish, extra three
stacked in waiting, box discarded.
See how much help we didnât need?
SMOKE
The new slash of road curves up beside five sleeping smokestacks.
Four stand together, one apartâthe lucky or the lonely one,
Similar Books
