‘For Gaza shall be forsaken, and Ashkelon a desolation: they shall drive out Ashdod at the noon day, and Ekron shall be rooted up.’ ZEPHANIAH 2.4
‘Marco Polo describes a bridge, stone by stone. “But which is the stone that supports the bridge?” Kublai Khan asks. “The bridge is not supported by one stone or another,” Marco answers, “but by the line of the arch that they form.” Kublai Khan remains silent, reflecting. Then he adds: “Why do you speak to me of the stones? It is only the arch that matters to me.'” Polo answers: “Without stones there is no arch.”’ INVISIBLE CITIES, Italo Calvini
When they were shown the abandoned houses,
with the half-eaten food on the table,
and the children’s toys scattered as if in haste,
the upended chair, broken glass, blood smeared,
they immediately remembered their parents’ tales
of what it was like at times in the old country,
and then, it seems, immediately forgot.
***
After many, many decades he returned,
to his village in the forest, expecting
to find all the houses razed, and the ruins
blackened with fire, instead they seemed pristine,
and each of them inhabited, including
his family’s. When he explained haltingly
to a passer-by – the language returning
the more he spoke – who he was, and why
he had returned, the villager went quickly
from house to house, rousing the inhabitants.
They chased him into the forest, throwing clods,
shouting abuse he remembered so well.
***
She pretended to be a stranger, strolling
past the gates to the courtyard of the house,
studying a tourist map. The wrought iron gates
had had metal sheets welded to them
to hide the courtyard – and the bougainvillea
had been ripped from the top of the high wall
and replaced with razor wire. There was CCTV
at each vantage point of the property.
A little girl suddenly appeared
at a window on the third floor, where
the bedrooms used to be, and waved. She waved back,
and whispered, “You are standing where I once stood”.
***
The apartment block next to the beach road
is only partially collapsed. Perhaps
the next bombardment will finish the job.
Its leaning white walls and glassless windows
are like a dystopian cenotaph.
A flat-bed cart – its many passengers
huddled as if in rain – passes, pulled
by a blinkered donkey. The Phoenician sea
breaks on the crowded beach. The sand between
the road and the water line is covered
by a disparate community
of trampled plastic tents.
By David Selzer