Day of Judgment Among Others

Translated by Yasmine Seale​

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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

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