Our Land.

Our Land

   I remember how,
   In 1946, hand in hand
   We went out into the field
   at the edge of Frishman Street
   to learn about Autumn.
   Under the rays of the sun
   slanting through the October clouds
   a fallah was cutting a furrow
   with a wooden plough.
   His friend wore a jallabiya
   rolled up to his knees
   as he crouched on a knoll.
   Soon we will all
   meet in the Tel Aviv below--
   Weinstein the milkman,
   and Haim the iceman
   Solganik
   and the staff at the dry-goods co-op:
   Hannah and Frieda and Tzitron;
   and the one-armed man
   from the clothing store
   at the corner
   near Cafe Ditza;
   Dr. Levova
   and Nurse Krasnova;
   the gentle
   Dr. Gottlieb.
   And we'll meet Stoller
   the butcher,
   and his son Baruch;
   and Muzikant the barber,
   and Lauterbach, the librarian;
   and the pretty dark-skinned lady
   from the Hahn Restaurant.

   And we'll meet the street-sweeper
   Mr. Yaretzky,
   whose widow had hanging
   in her hallway
   the parable-painting
   showing the stages of life.
   For these fellahin as well,
   and also for the children of the village
   of Sumel,
   who herded goats
   on Frug Street,
   the heart will make room
   like a table
   opening its wings.
   For we belong
   to a single body--
   Arabs and Jews.
   Tel Aviv and Tulkarem,
   Haifa and Ramallah--
   what are they
   if not a single pair of shoulders,
   twin breasts?
   We quarreled
   like the body parts of the man
   who brought the milk of the lioness
   down from the mountains
   in the legend told by Bialik.
   Through the cracks in the earth,
   we'll look up at you then;
   under your feet
   our land is being harrowed
   with chains of steel,
   and above your heads there is no sky
   like a light-blue shirt--
   but only the broad buttocks of the
   murderer.

from Aharon Shabtai, J'Accuse (2003) (by permission of New Directions)

Translated by Peter Cole