This poem was published in Compages, Number 19, San Francisco, California Spring 1988 (also translated into Italian)
In Jericho
the dates hang heavily from the branches.
Are they symbols of the rejoicing of the harvest ...
or of tears waiting to fall?
In Hebron,
the barbed wire divides downtown like a cancerous carbuncle
splits the flesh of an otherwise healthy organism.
The people bustle past, seemingly oblivious.
The guards at Abraham's mosque,* Israeli soldiers,
smile and fondle their rifles.
*Abraham's mosque, the tomb where the patriarch Abraham, founder of the Jewish religion, is buried, has been converted into a synagogue, with only one room remaining for Muslims.
In Bethlehem,
the tourists descend the staircase where a gold star
marks the manger's spot.
In Dheisheh,
down the road, concrete barriers block the entrances
to roads patrolled by
Israeli soldiers with purple berets
when they do not sit in their tent
on the barren hillside in the scorching sun.
The dust drifts down into Dheisheh refugee camp
from the neighboring cement plant.
Can it be an accident that this neighbor moved in next door?
Dheisheh's stories--each one a stanza of an epic,
and this is only one refugee camp--
Can this really be refuge?
In Nablus
city in a deep ravine,
Bassam Shaka'a smiles and rubs his knees;
the ends of his legs were blown off by settler assassins.
"There is Jnaid" he points,
the high-tech prison
built into the shell of a hospital on the hillside.**
Below, towers of ivory olive oil soap dry in the Shaka'a soap factory.
An old white-haired man intently wraps each bar with a paper label.
He turns and smiles, the camera flashes.
Can this, too, be resistance?
**Jnaid opened as a hospital a few days before the 1967 war. the Israelis turned it into a prison.
In Gaza,
the lawyer is not permitted to practice law.
the doctor is not permitted to practice medicine,
the artist is imprisoned for painting a picture,
the fishing boats lie abandoned on the shore,
confiscated by the police,
the fishermen are not allowed to fish.
The trade union is not allowed to organize.
One large prison, Gaza,
but have the Israelis not heard
that the prisons are schools of resistance?
Across the street from Gaza prison,
a guard in a watchtower peers through a window,
where we photograph prisoner's paintings
on pillowcases and handkerchiefs,
smuggled out of the prisons.
In Gaza town,
the soldiers sweep their Galils,
prepared to fire.
A few blocks away, the money changers finger rolls of shekels
in their open-air, drive-in bank.
At the beach, Israel's future Hawaii,
Sultan Ibraham,*** the little fish with the long name,
fries fragrantly in the pan.
***Sultan Ibrahim is the name of a small fish found in the Mediterranean off the Gazan coast.
In Ramallah,
the workers play ping pong in the union hall
while El-Haq's**** computers record the latest violations of civil rights.
****El-Haq, Law in the Service of Man, documents human-rights abuses in the West Bank.
In Beit Hanina,
the editor of a literary journal
holds up an article
and points to the mark of the censor.
In Jerusalem,
Israelis break down the door of the electric company,
close Al-Mithaq newspaper
build their new hotels,
the new Hyatt on the hill
overlooks the veil of tears.
In the old city,
vendors sell Palestine t-shirts and another which says,
"Visit Israel before Israel visits you."
A tourist pushes through the crowded alley
followed closely by a bodyguard with an Uzi.
Back in San Francisco,
the images blur and then resolve.
I have not seen everything
but I have seen enough.
How long can occupation last?
Until we end it.
--Steve Goldfield
