A continuing Gethsemane
an old olive oil press
rusting at the bottom of a sandy garden
in this occupied territory.
children lying prostrate,
on the soil
murmuring.
about a weight, a burden,
something heavy
we could not hear clearly,
what with all the muffled explosions
and such.
this man, this man, he screamed out
‘NOT AS I WILL BUT AS YOU WILL FATHER!’.
but there was no other man there, no father, nothing
Was this man drunk?
I do not think so
but he may have drunk some wine
sometime recently
silence
a pause in the battle,
we hear the cock crow
three times:
faraway strange light:
shimmering, suffuses us
sunset, not sunrise
the roosters had been eaten, long ago
what with the siege and the starvation and whatnot
we were just glad to be alive
?si=VkWrWLma3KIZetkL
David RL Moore
Mon 15th Jan 2024 15:50
Thank you John,
I appreciate your real time references coupled with Biblical and scriptural nods and winks.
I suspect you have deep rooted interests in Scripture if not a personal faith. I certainly identify with your imagery and humanistic sympathies regardless of specific beliefs/allegiance.
Your poem is dense with imagery that beckons the reader into a hellish reality most can only attempt to imagine.
I had a dream recently which seemed to be blocking my imagination from seeing it's entire canvas. It was subterranean in nature, a small child was in an enclosed colourless place alone seemingly trapped and bewildered. I only saw the childs face and an outline of a body..it seemed to suggest the child was naked and starving without any other human support. I took this to be a child surviving beneath rubble. It was a terrible image.
More horrific is the certainty that somewhere that scene exists as a reality for someone.
I know that poems like these can be exhausting to write, for many readers they can be exhausting to read...many are repelled by them and turn away. Sometimes I cannot cope with the overwhelming sadness they lay out before us. I have on occasion resisted writing similar work as it seems that its repetition serves little purpose.
Of course that is what those wielding such horrors wish to achieve, our numbness and fatique.
I sincerely thank you for your refusal to cease.
Shukran Habibi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jlu1XyPexn8&list=RDT4R6iFSYDZ0&index=7