My traditional post for the New Year:
IMAGINE THE ANGELS OF BREAD
by Martin Espada
This is the year that squatters evict landlords,
gazing like admirals from the rail
of the roofdeck
or levitating hands in praise
of steam in the shower;
Elderly Palestinian Suhail Shabana sits on her sofa after an Israeli police officer gave her ten minutes to leave her house before it was demolished in Beit Hanina in occupied East Jerusalem, Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2004. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)
this is the year
that shawled refugees deport judges
who stare at the floor
and their swollen feet
as files are stamped
with their destination
May 2000: Palestinian refugees in Lebanon stream to the Israeli-Lebanese border for a view of their homeland, after the IDF ends its 18-year occupation of south Lebanon (via Angry Arab).
this is the year that police revolvers,
stove-hot, blister the fingers
of raging cops,
and nightsticks splinter
in their palms;
An Israeli soldier threatens two Palestinian women protesting against the uprooting of Palestinian olive trees by Israeli bulldozers, in Az Zawiya village in the West Bank. (al-Quds al-Arabi, 10 June 2004).
this is the year
that darkskinned men
lynched a century ago
return to sip coffee quietly
with the apologizing descendants
of their executioners.
Palestinian Ahmed Elaian, 86, shows the keys of his home in Israel, on the 57th anniversary of Al Naqba, or day of catastrophe, in the Kalandia refugee camp near the West Bank town of Ramallah, Saturday May 14, 2005. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)This is the year that those
who swim the border's undertow
and shiver in boxcars
are greeted with trumpets and drums
at the first railroad crossing
on the other side;
Backdropped by a banner by Israel's Tourism Ministry, undocumented Palestinian workers who were caught by Israeli forces wait for their documents to be checked at a checkpoint between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, Wednesday Feb. 16, 2005. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)this is the year that the hands
pulling tomatoes from the vine
uproot the deed to the earth that sprouts the vine,
the hands canning tomatoes
are named in the will
that owns the bedlam of the cannery;
A Palestinian woman throws strawberries into buckets at a farm near the Israeli settlement of Dugit in the northern Gaza Strip, March 2, 2005. (REUTERS/Mohammed Salem) this is the year that the eyes
stinging from the poison that purifies toilets
awaken at last to the sight
of a rooster-loud hillside,
pilgrimage of immigrant birth;
Palestinian migrant workers sleep rough in the foundations of an unfinished shopping mall, Geha Junction, nr Tel Aviv. (Challenge Magazine, Jul-Aug 2005; They Always Return)this is the year that cockroaches
become extinct, that no doctor
finds a roach embedded
in the ear of an infant;
A Palestinian baby girl shows symptoms of malnutrition. From the Daily Telegraph: Palestinian children 'go hungry in poverty'; 6 August 2002.this is the year that the food stamps
of adolescent mothers
are auctioned like gold doubloons,
and no coin is given to buy machetes
for the next bouquet of severed heads
in coffee plantation country.
"This is the American weapon, this is the Israeli peace". Graffiti in the al-Daraj neighbourhood of Gaza City, after Israel assassinated Salah Shahadah of Hamas by dropping an American one-ton precision "smart bomb" on an apartment building there, killing Shahadah and fifteen civilians, including eleven children. Photo by Shirabe Yamada, 2 August 2002.If the abolition of slave-manacles
began as a vision of hands without manacles,
then this is the year;
Detained Palestinians are seen at an Israeli military camp just outside the Gaza Strip, near Khan Younis, October 13, 2006. (REUTERS/Amir Cohen)if the shutdown of extermination camps
began as imagination of a land
without barbed wire or the crematorium,
then this is the year;
An Israeli soldier prevents Palestinian farmers from reaching their land through at a gate in the separation barrier around Tulkarem in the West Bank; February 18, 2006. (MAANnews/Moiud Ashqar)if every rebellion begins with the idea
that conquerors on horseback
are not many-legged gods, that they too drown
if plunged in the river,
then this is the year.
A Palestinian demonstrator attempts to stop a steamroller during a protest against the construction of Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank village of Al-Ramadin, south of Hebron, Thursday, Aug. 25, 2005. (AP Photo/Nasser Shiyoukhi)
So may every humiliated mouth,
teeth like desecrated headstones,
fill with the angels of bread.
Palestinian children cheer during a theatre performance in the West bank city of Tulkarem to celebrate Palestinian Children’s Day; April 6, 2006 (MaanImages/Mouid Ashqar).