Excerpt
Th e palace shines under the skies of Palestinian days,
behind the sunbeams drifting with the human dust
of storyteller’s tales told under the hessian roofs of
Merchant’s stalls in a street of generations
that follow the ways that have walked these lanes
like worship jewels, To fi nd the future still the same.
Hear the strike against scraps and glass as jewelers trade their craft,
Walk into the beat of rhythmic weavers tracing the colours
of hand-made carpets fashioned under the
fi recracker-pattering of weapons traded and forged,
below the banner of American made,
Mapping the new world that refuses to change.
Arid lives of heady winds engraining the future
with the requisite pages torn from the exigent past,
A mongoose devouring its own fruits,
A child inheriting the rights of the last.
Piquant days, Revered, that graze amongst the fi elds of years,
Leaving patterned coils, Human inscriptions,
Carved by our own long race.
Under the same sunsets sick with rust,
Across the mountains that hear the call to prayer,
As the fi ght falls away from the bone, the unseen
maze gives way, and is left for the sons to devour,
Th e pulse of peace echoing in a mother’s mind:
Words against monsoon rain.
Mardi Orlando
33
Waiting for the licorice night, to send to sleep the retribution
of insistent minds that wonder naught for the freedom of the west,
Nor for treaties buried within the dusty veins of custom
and the unyielding force of faith, Yet breathing just.
Jordan and Israel, A walk away, Sharing a sea that is dead,
Yearning against the landscape
Of the shooting gallery of the old world.