On the Border
Johnmichael Simon
Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse 2007 (view all the winners)
First Prize
1.
Over hills once named in Phoenician
someone upstairs is moving furniture,
heavy stuff it groans massive over
stone floors, encountering bombed roads
and bridges it makes detours through
cobbled streets, hides in cellars
and tunnels, under schools, places of
worship, hospitals.
Someone is calling for blood, transfusion
offered but rejected. Revenge alone is
on his cracked lips, blood of the others,
Zed tribe people, blood of children buried
under rubble, blood congealing on litters
carried head high through streets by
shouting mobs—God is great, revenge, revenge.
Upstairs, the furniture moves again
trucks, laboring through muddy bypasses
on side roads from Bab al-Faraj—the gate
of deliverance, thundering from Azadi's freedom
tower, this furniture has many holy origins,
some distorted by history, today children recite
their names in pride: Katyusha, Khaibar,
Shahab, Jihad.
On the bills of consignment written in Nasta'liq
script, once reserved for prayer, the addresses
are lettered bold—this cabinet for Kiryat Shmone,
a coffin on wheels for Haifa, six mysterious boxes
for delivery further south, a blow to the vitals,
deep into the bleeding abdomens of sidelock-curling
youths chanting by the walls of their crumbling temples.
Blood, blood, they cry, fingers on blackened steel
triggers, as upstairs the bearded hawk-eyed warrior
intones the same message from loudspeakers on high.
Gone are the shining battalions poised for battle
on greening plains, gone the lumbering tanks devouring
fields to dust; wars are fought in streets today, in
homes, schools, playgrounds and libraries, in hospitals
and temples and everywhere the innocent congregate
listening to the furniture rumbling
upstairs, over stone floors, clouds graying,
horizons seeping blood in sunset as the angel
of revenge lights the fuse.
And the children in the shelters
huddle for a few last moments
under the iron beds until the light goes out.
2.
This year passed us by
without a backward glance
we went for a walk
down the road
To the place where the rocks
tumble against the apple trees
so far below a falcon
would need binoculars
To spy its prey down under his wings
crouching next to a tree
nibbling at last year's windfalls
and swoop like a knife
Talons extended a quick kill
and then lunch on an abandoned building
across the border
from where the predators swooped
Down on the sleeping town
and the children locked themselves
in shelters to escape
the shrapnel of their claws
This year we did not hear the sirens
at precisely eleven o' clock, sweeping
across the nation, cars hushed on the roads
Passengers standing at attention staring sixty years
into a pit of bones, still stirring
This year we stood on a hill and watched
the falcon circle above the hyraxes
sunbathing outside their rock shelters
we read poetry at meetings
Where the average age is still capable
of having memories of bones
this year we went for a walk
we didn't even try to forget
The unforgettable
we watched the hyraxes instead, fascinated
by their button eyes
This year we did not turn on the TV
did not hear about the truck bomb
that slaughtered 152 passers by
in Tal Afar
This year we counted wild flowers
ochre, cerise and violet, fresh after the rain
and in the night sky we did not notice the supernova
that glowed its sudden fire in the East
Perhaps extinguishing a thousand planets
and a billion lives in senseless war
guiltless we watched the sky
above the quiet trail beside the border
Between here and there
3.
Sometimes, walking the dog
along the path that skirts
the cascading waters of the Iron stream
turned overnight into a shouting river
as it rushes in from over the border
with Lebanon, a brave youth inside me,
lusting to test his muscles against
the current, clambers through
the raspberry brambles on to a rock ledge
above the waterfall's chorus, hesitates,
then, content with a taunting
'I am the king of the castle'
saunters back, hands in pockets
into my shaking skin as we continue
on our way, he, I and the dog, frisking
between sodden leaves and shadows
as the sun plays hide and seek
across the international border
Somewhere over there, past the border fence
beyond the fortifications on the hill,
from where artillery surveyed valley targets,
down the road now patrolled by a white UN troop carrier—
six blue helmeted soldiers daydreaming
of breakfast and paychecks—
somewhere in a schoolroom close by
one of those brown flat-roofed buildings
crouching on the slope, somewhere
perhaps, some bright eyed children sit,
who may perhaps one day, duck under the flags,
swim the river under the border bridge,
take my lusting boy by the hand
and frolic together in a shady pool
beyond the last waterfall, teaching each other
how to pronounce 'jump', 'dive' and 'swim'
in Arabic and Hebrew
