POETRY
A rose among gods of stone
2023–10–25
(Photos by the author in Ramallah, Palestine, Oct. 13–14, 2023)
I know how many bombs they dropped on Gaza,
I counted the flights overhead.
Took a walk with my brother on Sunday afternoon–
Day 2–
Looking at the stone towers of Ramallah,
I tuned to the hum in the sky, and wondered:
What if one were felled?
Like the flattened apartment blocks of Gaza,
What if stone gods collapse?
Are we born to be wanderers?
To roam where God roamed,
Where olive trees still cling to the earth,
And thorns and nettle and sahber lure the bees?
That buzz overhead–
Not bees–but the
Wrath
Of the golden calf of history,
Blessed by gods with hearts of stone.
We reach a road deserted,
Except for speeding police cars.
Psagot and the Qalandia Gate beyond,
No cover from a drive-by shooting.
We turn back.
I wonder again
And look at the sky
As I go to bed
Unable to sleep
Not knowing if I’ll wake up–
Anything can happen–
Will I see
my daughter
again?
It’s gunshots this late night
From the deserted road
Then sirens. Three Palestinians killed
At Qalandia
Sirens and silence
Airplanes overhead–
I know how many bombs they dropped …
Three thuds the next afternoon.
Explosions somewhere
TV says ‘a rocket hit Betar’–
(A stolenment, I recall
–illegal–
shadowing Battir).
Battir,
Where my daughter and I hiked among terraces of eggplants,
Four years earlier,
Where she enjoyed the ‘Ein–
Water gushing from barren rock
A rose among stone gods!
By day three I stopped caring for sirens
or gunshots
Walked to the old city
Deserted. Another strike day–
For the three killed in Qalandia, now four.
Murals of children playing,
A rose among stone gods,
A red rose,
A fire rose among stone gods,
The stones rose,
The people rose against gods of stone.
The people, a rose.
With love from an undisclosed location,
– Ramsey Hanhan
[Murals in the old city of Ramallah by Fouad Alymani and Natalie Najjar]
