Poetry

In their line of work smiling is rare
Uzis and tear gas the more common fare.
But from ten years ago there’s photos that show
Israeli goons smirking at the bravado
of a Palestinian girl, not even eight,
thrusting her fist in the face of their mate.
Ahed Tamimi, three feet of temerity,
a stripling they dismissed with hilarity.

Today their laughter is stilled and unheard.
A teenaged Ahed their malice has stirred
for raising her hand and delivering a smack
to a gun-wielding soldier leading a pack
that invaded her village, as often they had,
and cruelly shooting her cousin Mohammed.
A slap which though quiet rang out far and wide.
Now revenge is demanded to heal Zionist pride.

Rapacious settlers from before the Crusaders
have yearned to possess Palestine
but as others before them, these Zionist invaders
will shatter on those blue eyes sublime.

Her global esteem brings a torrent of lies
“What brand of Arab has blond hair and blue eyes?”
One Knesset demagogue calls it pure ruse –
the Tamimis are actors, just paid to confuse.
Arrest them all, specially her mother for filming it.
We’ll use Hollywood if propaganda’s seen fit,
to broadcast the tale that terrorism’s the frame
to distort the Palestinian people’s just claim.

Then a second esteemed legislator did curse
that his boot would put Ahed in hospital or worse.
“No one could stop me. I would kick in her face.”
His hatred for Arabs is so commonplace,
he voices what Zionists think but might shrink from,
howling that Palestinians are vile “dogs” and “scum.”
Oren Hazan could be seen as just cracked,
yet the Zionist state and its thugs have his back.

Rapacious settlers from before the Crusaders
have yearned to possess Palestine
but as others before them, these Zionist invaders
will shatter on those blue eyes sublime.

In the face of a brave Palestinian teen
what the Zionists plot is grimly obscene.
Jail without trial for sure in the near term.
But soldiers dismayed by her blue eyes firm
know that their prisons won’t break Ahed.
So they’ll fashion a plot to render her dead,
try to stifle the light and cast into the shade
those resolute eyes that remain unafraid.

Then will we look to our own precious girls
and not see their image in Ahed’s blond curls?
For they are at heart like their sister Ahed
with one crucial difference, which must be said,
that they, if they live in a principled state,
can hope that justice will govern their fate,
while Ahed Tamimi endures jail and courts death
when she smacks a thug from the IDF.

Rapacious settlers from before the Crusaders
have yearned to possess Palestine
but as others before them, these Zionist invaders
will shatter on those blue eyes sublime.

Victoria, BC
May 1, 2018

You’re lucky to get one
at least one you notice.
Then in one month it’s two,
and two that you’d not just have heard about
in the usual shapeless fashion –
maybe from that coiffed TV anchorwoman
yam-yammering on
about this or that Weird Twist of Nature;
two weeks ago it was the drought,
the day before yesterday a hurricane
bent on blowing away the Republican Convention,
and who would mourn that?
But you can’t expect Nature to save us,
given the abuse we’re handing her.
So you let such hopes go the way
of yet another zucchini from Ted.

However it was you learned of its coming,
on exactly those two nights
you looked up
to a radiant face
that slapped you
with the force of the pointe shoes of a ballerina
rappelling down the arid cliffs of Greenland,
commanding you to halt
your pathetic rush there or back
and behold that Other,
distant,
sailing
far above your baffled puzzlement about
who Catherine had really loved that dazzling autumn when you struck out east,
what propelled your idiot six-year quest to make engineers obey the forest,
where they buried Mugsy, after they told you they’d Found Her a New Home,
when you might stumble upon Wisdom,
why Marie, stunning in her mink coat,
sent you that revolutionary Dear-John letter
counseling you to stop yearning to gorge
your hungry fists on her dark curls
and seek solace among the workers.

To double your awe
there were two moons,
two in one month,
each of them different as twins can be.
The first riding a scowling sky over Kootenay Lake
that threatened to make a mouthful of the main show.
The second gliding into view
with an entourage of lustrous feather clouds
gathered in mourning about their goddess,
holding a mirror to the Arctic islands
dissolving beneath them.

Resplendent was each moon,
and, you flatter yourself,
charmed at noting, for once, you –
you, with eyes fixed on the hunt for pennies underfoot –
in the rapt audience.

Anchorwoman tells you it’ll be 2015
before there’s another.
As usual, she’s lying,
playing you for a fool –
to believe that you,
or any of us,
will see the like
of this
again.

Victoria August 2012