Street Corner in Palestine
All spring, almost all last year
misery rained down
upon the humans, concepts were
slipped into long-silenced ears like bugs
& burglars, more transparent,
took the glass from your windows
until you could see nothing -
in the lexicon of demons all is reversed
‘Smart’ a simple synonym for fool
obliged by that silent ear, they
swept like a curse among the houses
where faculties were handed over
to tricksters on television
people none the wiser
how deaf we are to trumpets &
angels, the sounds of Heaven
while words from our abusers
gather like starlings in the throat-
the mob waking from its slumber
not in some Revolution
but in a dread tide of
yes to ‘more please’
Who would eat lies with breakfast
and dinner, sit in their armchair
as the storm water rises
feeding ankles with a diet of sludge
more variants of nonsense?
Who would put up with wet carpets
& jumbled sentences
husks where truth
& lies are now entirely back to front?
Mudslingers to a man — each one
Multitudes are clinging to the old gods
& Moses is a wild mountain man
mission failed & tearing out
his beard to feed a few goats
& Christ looks on to see sheep are
no longer what they were -
cannot be counted on, do not
want rescuing, prefer their
sickening need to belong
while the Prodigal never leaves
those pigs & dies down
in the mud & the desert prophet -
who thought he’d seen all things
can turn a snake into a stick
yet cannot turn it back again
How does this end — and when?
We move towards a stand-off
in need of a gunslinger
an OK Corral
this battle a fork on a broken road
where vultures wait to pick
you off — and who speaks for those
who have nothing? A handful dotted
here and there on no map
you could ever find on Earth
yet last night I watched a street corner in
Palestine turn into theatre -
two boys singing a song of joy &
remembered, in the end-
just when we lost all hope-
David beats Goliath
with a single dodgy throw
COPYRIGHT Simon Heathcote
