Six Poems on the Expulsion from Gush Katif, 10th of Av, 5765, August 2005
Eliaz Cohen is a well-known Israeli poet and editor who lives in Gush Etzion.
From the Hebrew : Larry Barak
Gush Katif was a thriving bloc of Israeli towns and villages built n the Gaza Strip from 1968 with the encouragement of Israel's government. In August 2005, the IDF carried out a Cabinet decision initiated by then PM Ariel Sharon for unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip and forcibly removed the 8,600 residents of Gush Katif from their homes. Their communities were demolished, the Arabs torched the synagogues and even the profitable greenhouses left for their use, soon turning to launching thousands of rockets at southern Israel from those very same destroyed communities. The trauma experienced by the residents, the grief of the IDF soldiers and many other Israeli residents - is expressed in the lyric poems below..
I. An Invitation to Cry
To you the good loyal soldier who on that day the day of the command
will approach our dwelling:
*
I will run to you with open arms I will run I will embrace you and lead you.
In front of the entrance I will take hold of your collar, I will tear it to
the place where your heart is
*
Enter, sit with us, the mourners, taste the round pretzels
like the children who even now are tumbling on the rug like
fate, again houses in Etzion are turning pocked and hollow
*
Silently we will walk at the end through the rooms of the house:
Only I and you, my wife, and the walls remember quarrels and loving
lines that were written and erased as though burned in the book of life.
In your eyes, my good soldier, I will see a tear, our friends stifle
their crying, wrote the poet in 1948, perhaps now it is permitted to cry
and if there were more time
we would lie down in green pastures and play again
the hide-and-seek game of
The Song of Songs
you as my love, I as the beloved, and you, soldier, in the role of the watchmen
*
and I would take you running above the cemetery –
to here, in an hour of great favor
I heard the allah of the muezzin
as though rising together with the praying of yehudain
here one can prophesy, here
if only we had more time
*
in a whisper you ask: have you packed? as though there were in this world a bundle
which can contain yearning
*
You stop the stream of tears. We go out for a breath of air on the porch
here I prepared a little corner to write the unfinished novel
now from the fig tree in the yard the last leaf falls
everything is filled with symbols you say
you fall on my neck, weeping bitterly
my good, loyal soldier, now at long last it is permitted to cry.
II. This Land Trembling Under Our Feet
This land trembling under our feet is
a wild lioness.
For some time now it is a wild lioness screaming her wounds
from her breasts they want to uproot her cubs
now her roar rolls on
*
this land trembling under our feet
will shake us (like a rug its dust before Passover)
only those who are tsumud in their souls will remain
*
this land trembling under our feet on that day will split
from the northern Dead Sea she will ooze in a dense river of milk and honey
in the milk and honey river that will adhere us to it
as is the custom of all rivers
to the sea
* * * * *
“Leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein” (Psalms 104)
No longer will be heard your yearning hoot, whale child
no longer.
From what depths did you make aliyah?
Didn’t you know that on the dark side of this sun-drunk land
the death shadow is great?
Have you not heard that here is a land that devours its children?
From the top of the invisible Mount Carmel which is going up in smoke
I see you , whale child
crawling to the blue the blue without success. What
did you want to bring with your fins? Perhaps a bit of ocean tranquility
or everyone’s fantasy to be swallowed like Pinochio or Jonah
into the giant womb?
Perhaps a 2000 year longing made its way in the sound of your yearning hoot…
And now you know, like David in the Psalms, we are all pawns
in the hands of God
and I don’t have the heart to see you again in the throes
of little-hope-waves
in the destructive waters of the Kishon river.
IV. Poems Written in the Sand (a)
In anger – remember blood
In anger – remember sacrificial binding
And who is greater:
Tali and her four daughters or
Hanna and her seven sons?
Great God of mothers
Great God of mothers and fathers
in anger remember feet
the feet of novice priests were cut off
like mown weeds
toes will no longer impress their smell
in the beautiful sands
*
they were good to me, the sands of Katif,
more than abundant gold and silver
the tongues of the Rabbis and their students too
got to lick the dirt here
and once again I am a child-of-the-sands searching for footprints
here once – Grar
Abraham and Isaac, but there is no fear of God in this place
and they will kill me
*
I saw the sea lamenting in the song of the sea
a piece of this blue is torn
from my eyes
by a concrete wall
a girl doll is swept to the shore. All your breakers and your waves
and as then, in poetry
The Lord will rule forever
*
write on the sand a huge inscription:
“THE LAND OF ISRAEL BELONGS TO THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL”
decorate it with sea shells
and observe from the side
how a big frothy wave
erases everything
Passover 5765
V. Poems Written in the Sand (b)
In anger – remember mercy
In anger – remember innocence
Mercy – like this azure
Innocence – like this sand
Lest it return and cover everything
*
like this sand
which will never end
*
which may not be numbered for multitude
*
Trust in the LORD, and do good;
dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.
"The Torah of the LORD is just, rejoicing the heart"
"A Psalm of David - O LORD, who may abide in your tabernacle?
Who may dwell on your holy mountain?
He who walks uprightly, and works with righteousness,
and speaks the truth in his heart."
(inscription from the holy ark of the synagogue in Ganei Tal)
so I saw the law of innocence
and wept
*
I saw the naive believing and sowing
who will shake your sowing hand to seal an agreement
that you will reap in joy
*
I say (quietly, inside the heart)
perhaps the sand will cover
the sea will roil
and you are sowing
*
my God – may it never end:
the sand and the sea the sand and the sea the sand
and the sea
*
The prayer of man:
"Our barns are filled with grain, our houses with infants
what more will you ask of us
homeland"
*
we paid with fat we paid with blood we paid with tears we paid with sweat
in the cracked threshing sledge we will prepare in the sand for new seeds
*
now I say (and almost know)
"for all the days of the land, in these sands too
seed and harvest
and cold and heat
and summer and winter
and day and night
will not cease"
Iyar-Sivan 5765
“Take your dead and return to your lands
to the places you came from.”
(Mahmoud Darwish)
VI. Poems Written in the Sand (c)
In anger – remember blood
In anger – remember innocence
In anger – remember sacrificial binding
Innocence – such are those living above the sands
Blood – such are the dead
Even they have no rest here
*
here they are the dead of Katif:
beautiful and shining, I saw them on the night
of the ninth of Av
holding hands
lamenting the living
when the moon glow spills among the sands
they whisper:
will you indeed remove us now
will you indeed
*
behold one of them – Angel-faced Yochanan
reaches out and deepens the digging
to the east
to the dead of Hebron to Rachel and to
Joseph who is in Samaria
they surely know a thing or two
about sacrificial binding
and about returning sons and about exiles
*
on the night of the ninth of Av I stand on the rock of Etzion
and sands shift under me
between the living and the dead the incense of my poems
is in my hands
the plague does not cease
*
from here I look at the timetable and see
everything is snatched on Tu B’Av
the virgins and the vineyards and the dances the young men
the houses and the gardens and the living and the dead
everything is preyed upon
there were no better days for Israel
than the night of the 9th of Av, 5765