Damascus Gate

Damascus Gate

I didn’t hear it in Jerusalem
at Damascus Gate
three bodies dropped a mile away
while we sat and ate

Falafel sandwiches in the heat,
before we walked to a house,
to see folk spat at
as the sun sank down.

Ramadan waited and soldiers fell in
mouths dripping
on the smooth yellow rock.
and as we walked Kate said

I’ll take the big one,
you take the little two.
And we stared at the whites of their eyes
and teeth. The brown of their shirts

and grey of their guns.
There are black mosques, green crescents,
Red kuffiyehs sprayed on every wall.
Red stands for liberation

for a brand new nation
filled with pilgrims and settlers.
And we passed through them: the soldiers
like ghosts, our tongues trapped,

our eyes holding on to souvenirs
pictures of the pope and jesus, T-shirts
that say “God Bless Israel.”
And around us just a market, flat breads

and pancakes stacked for sundown;
the excitement and hunger shaking
the thirst of the small dry places
through the old town.

The soldiers poured their bottles out
like rivers
And a small brown boy, taller than the wall,
threw a stone.

( Henry Bell ) 

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