fear peered through the blind of a window,
as a slow shutter twisted to capture the khaki,
and chin-straps, and rifles, and nervous young fingers
caressing still triggers and disengaged safeties.

But it was not the chin-strap, nor rifle, nor fingers
that splintered the door-frame and shattered the silence;
it was hob-nails, and leather, and the sour deadly tones
of a tongue that was foreign, and heavy, and dense.

And they came for the young men, brothers and sons;
to bind, and to blindfold, and drag to the borders
of all human endurance in this furious storm,
by the nervous young hands merely following orders.

So, young men hunting young men took two from that house;
randomly captured and instantly tried –
in the ghettos, the villages, the towns, and refugee camps,
and the cities that burn in a land occupied.

So these two. Then two more, then five, and then ten.
From jerusalem, beita, bethlehem, and from gaza,
and nablus, balatta, and hebron, and more…to
the desert, the negev, the barbed wire of ansar

where young vessels empty and sink in the sand,
where the expanses of empathy cease to exist,
where grinding the shards of these urns into dust
distils not surrender, but the will to resist.

and so khaki, and hob-nails, and rifles, and nerve gas
hunt children with slings and small stones in their hands;
grim nests for bullets that whistle a message to
stiff tiny fingers that cling to their land.

and my camera clicks, and advances, and clicks,
while war footage spins and rewinds in my mind
to the death camps, and barbed wire, and millions of dead
and the world’s solemn vow in another dread time.

© Chris Frazer, 1993

First published in People’s Voice, September 1993

This page was last on August 25, 1998

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