Invitation -- Leonard Schwartz
the house cannot get in
the house cannot come in
the house cannot stay out
the house cannot get out
- Rodrigo Toscano
No symphony proves fruitful,
or Hebron.
Not theoretical considerations, not physical existence,
or Hebron.
To say "information" is not information
but an inkling of intensive form.
But do we, literally, unfathomable?
Say "Jenin", say "Nablus".
This will not be true of an inessential content
or Gaza.
And for each crutch sat seven without limbs.
Or Tulkarm, or Ramallah.
In a mode
forgotten to man,
a million inmates.
Or Gaza.
All our tumult
tumbles into words,
turning them to windows of salt.
Of cells and sun
falling on the prison cells,
the sharpest rays illuminate
the longest jail blocks,
they will grow in the sunlight
of a special economy.
An original, profoundly superficial,
or Jenin.
Scores of dead, send in
live doves. Each hoe held in the hand
of a hated rival. Beat their beaks.
Not grasp the birth pangs of a twig.
Say information, say to a woman
"Gaza, strip."
Occupied by one's own gaze,
seeing only what one wants to see.
Or Bethlehem.
Yes.
Yes, your visa will expire at the end of this poem.
Yes, you will need a new passport to exit
this nightmare, a new genre of passport.
If every veteran of reality rose up and protested
every single case of war mongering—
or Jenin.
In the prison yard convenes a court
for shooting hoops. Shooting hopes,
all who enter here.
Or Hebron.
Unlike the words of the original text
orthodox experiences remains fire-proof:
just give me the rock.
Pass me the damn Dome of the Rock
or rebound it, rebind it, ban travel both ways,
or Bethlehem.
Dribbled away in a mode
forgotten to free men,
which the Committee against Torture
finds to constitute torture.
Never to liberate the language
imprisoned in the rock.
The Tomb of the Patriarchs, forever and ever.
Oh, he was wed to his wines, cheap as chickens.
And of course he was strung out,
which is his God Given Right.
Or Qalqiliya.
Slapped buttocks
in explicit jeans
no one dares talk about.
Or Tulkarm.
Didn't the river need seven dams to block its waves?
A freshly pierced goat's heart,
flung into the tracks tank treads leave
in mingled bloods and mud.
These lands of little men.
In their white frothy bliss,
their ability not to see,
steak for me and steel for you,
doctors without borders for all those devils
inconveniently jostled,
kept by curfew from even their cemeteries.
But the cemetery is our library,
our archive, our garden!
This is not true of an inessential content,
or Gaza.
This is forever, for forever and ever.
Or Nablus.
This is forever, for forever and ever.
Trauma irrigates new channels of hate.
Or "Hebron":
a decisive detail evolving only in language,
a flux substantiating the published,
or Gaza.
Beit Rama, Salfit, Artas,
a liquid spectacle of "facts on the ground",
forced to strip and march at gunpoint.
Or Ramallah.
Unable to grow a single blade of grass
without the Others permission.
Did I mention the moon
reflected in the silent waters
of the Dead Sea?
That you thought you had done with crossing
sad tracts of land, those that made of you and your travails
amazing additions to the constant stone you wearied?
Or Jericho.
Dearest Father
(important listener)
ask that ancient washerwoman
if there is anything left to wash,
anything left to grow.
Or Ramallah.
Dearest Rumi says that if you are unthankful for the fruit
all the other forms turn ugly too.
Or Hebron.
The belt that is the waist about to heal.
Dearest olive groves confiscated by the courts.
The waist that will not heal, freshly belted.
Never felt living beings within you?
Visit this cemetery,
dig into these roots of light,
lose yourself in earth.
Silence capsizes you
into a glass kingdom,
vast and perceptual, shattering
all your links to the former caravan.
Dearest Mother.
Or Hebron.
Sand the color of shattered stone,
in which sits a big part of my past.
Dearest Mother,
calling Gaza.
Dearest Mother, dearest Father.
Land that sobs from its own contractions,
never rid of itself, syntax beyond aching,
never actually giving birth.
Quivering in the wheatfield
from so much female,
too many mounds of remembrance,
too much musk and haunch.
And the sun clasps all of it,
blood-stained and precious,
to its sensors.
Calling Gaza.
Culling Gaza.
Calling Gaza.
Or Hebron.
To say "information" is not information
but an inkling of intensive form.
Of necessity therefore the demand
for literalness.
Gaza.
Or Hebron.
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