HOLY FOOL FOR THE HOLY LAND

The people (ours) whose annihilation (ours) was in a flash
the people, who knew they were not a people,
but a million oriental crystal shards
caught up in the spider-webs of Europe,

Churchill and Sultan parades marched slow candid ghosts,
Nagging grandmother phantoms went unheeded
old books folded,
turned to iron
into warplanes
into tanks: metal elephants first crafted by Hannibal,
mechanical wind-up tins along beaches
renamed Tanks, Mega,
and stenciled is the star
of our house upon them, Magen David
under the sun of oblivion,
the star of arid earth mixed with wine,
some children trace the star everywhere with their fingers: that is the only
test of being Jewish under this moon

This evening people,
seeking to destroy that evening people,
their suffering now
just a slow-burning spectacle, much-awed pitiful cavalry
decades of forever
in the sonic theater of the world, hope
sublimated to applause, support, booing comprehension,
mega-inter-televised by a thousand crystal terminals
simmering Negev of the bureaucrat Essenes
take notes throughout the last execution,

Evening peoples keep long memories
Long old iron keys twisted in the cedar (in Sfarad-Spain, in emerald Palestine) and, both kept photo albums of old evenings, smiling green ruins’ cinnamon

Against the maudlin sun of oblivion,
Star of arid earth and love, written in wine and Air,

the song of doves and dove of songs remain just above prisons,
are heard—
neither by living guards nor invaders of unraveling memoirs,

Ancestors of neither could drag their treasures
lost on the fated day.

Junk of War military parade floats carried ash of limb, ash of lamb—

I am a holy fool for the holy land

In the end, the Sun and Moon can destroy and recreate like no human can.

RESPONSE TO A PRAYER DANCED IN EILAT RIGHT AFTER THE 2006 WAR

It is not true that about the cedars of Levanon are crushed by Lord’s breath
like tobacco gnashed in a giant’s mouth.
It is not true, what they prayed from a wet mountaintop
overlooking the galilee, rained-upon worshippers
Prayers with iron leggings in them,
prayers without a small tree,
Prayers without what the sea gives or plunders,
without fruit or figs, sans hibiscus, poor of fern, and no birds
these are simply untrue.

If such a tank-turret god gnashes anything,
he gnashes on his own thousand
hooves that failed to fell the cedars of Levanon

Arturo Desimone, Arubian-Argentinian writer and visual artist, was born in 1984 on the island Aruba into a family of refugees and exiles from Argentina and Poland. He inhabited Aruba until the age of 22. He relocated to Argentina while working on a long fiction project about childhoods, diasporas, islands and religion. Desimone’s articles, poetry and fiction pieces have previously appeared “Jewrotica” the “New Orleans Review”, and “the Drunken Boat”.