A Walk in the Woods
         for Mahmoud Darwish
by Mark Lipman

There comes a point
when you have to step
out of the ether,
to walk and get
back to nature,
to listen to the birds sing,
to breathe and write
about beautiful things
before being drawn right
back into Gaza.

And how privileged
I am to be able to stop,
to step back and walk away,
to take a breath, a sip of water,
to think about evergreens today
beside a lake, far from cannon fodder
and dead children, the cries of mothers,
somewhere peaceful and full of bird chatter,
when from above an engine roars, cutting
through the sky, to once again shatter
that moment of peace, with eyes shutting,
as you wait for the next bomb to drop.

Yet, the only thing falling
on me is a rusty leaf,
the rubble, merely sprawling
foliage, covering not limbs and grief,
broken bodies for the mass grave
that becomes the founding stone
for another theme park, but pave
only over ants, just bugs, to be shone
the same indifference as a Zionist
would looking upon a child’s fragments
a hand here, a foot there, just statistics
for the “better than’s” of “chosen” figments
of the imagination. No tears will be shed today.

Yet, as my tracks,
like those of a bulldozer,
tramp over the mounds and stacks
of debris, like some American poser
stealing a home in the West Bank, with mud
thick as blood, covering my boots, staining
the soles of my feet, the thud
of another acorn falls, raining
down from the trees, and I recall
the words once spoken to me
from the books that they all cherish,
saying, “What you do unto the least
of my creatures,” they say in every parish,
“you do unto me.” Yet, they still refuse to cease
the fire, holding themselves higher than all others,
above the law and their own commandments,
and I just wonder, at what point will this all end,
so that we can hear the birds sing once again?



 

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