FENCE GRAFFITI POEMS *
(For Israel and Palestine at War on the Days of Eid)
...No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the
voice/...Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehoods/ Teach us to care and
not to care/ Teach us to sit still/...Our peace in His will/...And let my cry
come unto Thee. ---T. S. Eliot, “Ash Wednesday”
1. Voice, Love, Peace
That would have required a lot of fences,
a lot of denuded trunks, fallen trees even.
You would have to stare at backyards
green with revived spring grass, risking
life and limb. “Is
this your graffiti? Is it?”
But the three words I stepped on, walking
on the trail, in dotard cadence: Peace, Love:
they were temple bromides. But Voice?
They were sprawled on the grime, like
drunken derelicts, one did not have to look
but be accosted by their urgent demand
on winding asphalt: Peace. Love. Voice.
Like four-letter words, they surprise one
whose habit is to look down in timorous
gait, troubled by daily lust, greed, and lies
dreading mayhem from a gaze at the sky.
2. Back to the Hill of Skulls on
Glen Erin
I step on these words graffitied on the sprung
trail. I mutter: Peace, Love, Voice. I did not fall.
He did. Got lashed.
Mocked. Kicked to stand
with his burden, he insisted on loving even his
enemies, even those who cried: Crucify Him!
On my quaint walk through a new spring on
Glen Erin trail, I shrugged the lingering cold off
and whispered: Here
is my empty heart. Occupy it.
--ALBERT B. CASUGA
*Two of the five poems featured at The World Peave Poetry Festival in
Richmond, British Columbia, Canada
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