Alok Bhalla

INTIFADA POEMS: FROM MY ISRAELI JOURNAL

A NIGHTMARE VISION IN JERUSALEM

“Among the thoughts that always came to plague her, a new one appeared – solitary, foreign, and dangerous as a winter wolf.” – Ismail Kadare, Three Elegies for Kososvo

Like the wolf after a kill
the victorious always feel
they are just

but how can the wolf know
what lurks in the forests ahead

or in the forests of the past
lost in the dark depths of memory

the wolf cannot know
there are other creatures
     swifter
          with sharper claws, bloodier teeth

perhaps only a poet
watching a tense hawk
hovering over hard stones
or a painter of olive trees
still shimmering in strange days
can understand
that there are gardens with white houses
outside the forest
where the eyes in dazzled sunlight
are not a puzzle
and the owl’s hoot in moonlight
is only a startled delight

or perhaps
some haunted Sybil reads
in the runes of mirrors
dark cindered paths
which turn back to forests
and lead
always and forever
only to the circle
ringed by snarling wolves.

In the Village Al-Nuaman Isolated by Super-Highways

“Oh, she was beautiful as no one else
has been, but was unfortunate like all.”
– Calderon, Life is a Dream.

The air is nourishing
the morning has borrowed some blue
from a medieval Book of Hours.

The mosque calls for payers.
The synagogue is quiet with awe.
The Armenian church is dark with incense.

Death glides in on chemical wings.

The bull-dozers cross
the limits of hubris
cut through prophetic hills
see mythic enemies
from some shoah of the past
in every small village.

     Should we not
     each of us
     corrupt the pharmacopeias of myths
     where birds in fire sing sorrow
               sorrow

     We’d be saved
     perhaps
     if we could canonize Fools
     if out of the fierce wilderness of words
     we could build a new city of the mind
     where our secret longings could remain in the shadows
     or roam the streets like sunlight or dusty winds
     if we could mark our time with
     the fall of waves on shores of sand
     the fall of leaves on grey stones
     and finally the fall of green wings on soft ash
     for a new city of the mind must know past sorrows.

The daughter with a red hijab
and blue jeans
plays in the shadow of the mulberry tree.

Her father
sky-clad
     grey eyes
supervises the threshing of wheat
as the wind carries the chaff
     and spreads it over his earthly sanctuary
          of grape vines, shy smiles, sweeping hills,
               popular songs, basil, camels, lonely memories,
                    and sunlit sand streaming through the leaves.

He cups his hands
the blue sky fills them
green fields lie in their depths.

     There are springs, he says,
     under the ground.

          The earth whispers again and again
          “I want you
          I want you to be…
          I want you…
               to be…
               always…”

“It’s Friday, I know,” he murmurs,
“But security forces give permits
for threshing machines
only when the villages are empty
and men at prayers…
and tomorrow is Sabbath.”

     On the hill of flint-stone and thyme
     in the sun-burnt horizon
     the Herodian is a vague mound
     of shadows and sun-baked walls.

          a peacock calls from another age
               from another palace.

“The field across lies fallow.
My brother was refused permission
to till his field this year.”

An armoured car
with two soldiers in ray-ban sun-glasses
keeps watch.

Blue stars float on white flags
fluttering between two rivers.

An armoured car
keeps watch.

     How quickly we forget ancient psalms
     prophesying nightmares in furnace fires.

     Religious braggarts, calling upon their gods,
     find in stars and crescent moons, flags and banners,
     signs and prayers and excuses
               for executions and wars.

Wherever the girl skips
barbed wires trailing behind
entangle her, coil into her smile
writhe in her hair
till their steel blades cut into her dreams
her skipping songs
her weaving hands
and in ever-widening circles
imprison other children
in other villages.

     and still lingers in the crevices
     of temple walls where mothers and daughters
     fathers in fedora hats and tasselled sashes
     leave scribbled wishes.

     There are willing executioners everywhere.

Her brother
only a few years older
rides up on his donkey
hooting with laughter
mocking the armoured car
with two soldiers in Ray-Ban sun glasses.

He dares us to ride like him
bare-backed and without a stirrup
delighted as he traces fear in our eyes.

He knows a kind of American English
enough to follow Die Hard With Vengeance
with the bravado of all children of stone
but is keen to learn Arabic, Hebrew and French.

     “Why French?”

He rubs the donkey’s ears
makes a theatrical
sweep with his arms
and with the infectious smile
of a suave journalist
or a cautious diplomat:

“So I can tell the world
that we live in this prison
under an open sky
watched forever
by Druze, Bedouin and Jewish soldiers
     our brothers in
          Ray-Ban sun glasses!”

The mocking laughter of religious wars
is often lost on visitors
who can neither ride a donkey
nor till the field.

The boy has lived in the shadow
of the Herodian all his life.
Fatal stones of the intifada
fit easily in his hands.

     The sage of future time
     slips through two fleeting smiles
     and looks beyond the bulldozed house.

          “…who does the killing and the dying
          and spread an evil report of the land
          that eateth up the children thereof.”

Still, he wants to learn French
so he can tell the world –

     There are still prisons under our open skies.