Salima
POETRY FORMAT, 8 Jan 2018
Ada Aharoni – TRANSCEND Media Servivce
Salima, my Palestinian sister,
come, let’s build a miraculous bridge
from your fig tree and your vineyard to mine
over the boiling suffering
wars and the Intifada.
Salima, my dear friend,
when will we laugh again
like two women
instead of crying bitterly on
the gravestones
of our fallen sons?
You and me, my friend,
on this miraculous bridge,
from your olive grove to mine
from my orange grove to yours
in the scent of jasmines in bloom,
holding us by the hand
whispering secrets about our loves,
our children, our parents, our projects,
and our ardent desire
a bright blue sky and a night
irradiated with stars, pearls of peace.
I do not want to be your oppressor,
you do not want to be my oppressor
neither your jailer nor my jailer –
we do not want to scare ourselves
under our vines and fig trees
in a torn metal horizon
by bruising and bloodshed
of our children,
by stones, bullets and missiles.
My dear Arab sister,
let’s hurry to build
this bridge solid and free
near which each of us
will be able to sit with your baby,
under his vine and under his fig tree
And no one can scare us,
And no one will be able to trouble us.
______________________________________________
Ada Aharoni is founder of The International Forum for the Literature and Culture of Peace-IFLAC. She is an Egyptian-born Israeli poet, writer, lecturer and peace researcher.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 8 Jan 2018.
Anticopyright: Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgement and link to the source, TMS: Salima, is included. Thank you.
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A fine poem. And, especially moving, powerful and important as it is written by an Israeli poet and addressed to her Palestinian sister (and all the rest of us!). This is the best kind of “political poetry”; i.e., it does not forget its moorings in the subtle art (reference Emily Dickinson: “Tell all the truth/but tell it slant”), and, at the same time, it is very much about the world we live in now–the political world of wars, oppression, lies. This is poetry that informs the alerted mind and touches the heart.