Day of Judgment Among Others
Translated by Yasmine Seale
I was sitting on the toilet when the horn sounded
I did not leave with the others
I took no part in their panic
was a god calling or a maintenance man
all to make me confess to stealing
fat sheep from the fields of hope
I will confess no need
to put me in the great cage
you call the end of the world
to step on my conscience raised
between heaven and hell
hell you see is my biological mother
I owe her my flaming temper
my loathing for the well-intentioned
wedded to justice like a first cousin
I confess it was I who held the head
of justice under the water it was
a mercy killing
I who stole the keys
to the doors of your striving
crack them open here it comes
failure’s rough palm
I confess I have loved
my mother and father
and wished for their deaths
and hated my children before they were born
I confess
who rules this land is of no more concern
to me than to the butterflies
nor who died for it
if their fate will be mine
I confess
I have more pity for the setting sun
than for the children begging at crossroads
more pity for my eardrum when the slogan sounds
we die Palestine survives
you see I want to live
even in the toilet
I confess
I stole the sheep one moonless night
I hid the moon in the fridge to keep
the poets from writing about it
and hope dried up became a desert
and the angels thinking the end was nigh
blew the trumpet its bray
crept through the window
and I will not leave before recording
the frozen moon
the frozen chicks
the frozen hearts
I moon
chicks hearts
same stuff