3 days in the land of a dying illusion*

When cities crack, do stories too,
their scaffolding
collapsing?
Then I trawl the fragments lying disarranged,
searching, this side and that.
Emerge, ashen,
fragments limply
dangling
from upturned palms.

When cities crack, do memories too,
like china heirlooms
smashing?
Then I crawl into the folds of memory,
lifting,
calling,
tapping.
Searching for the missing,
never finding.
Brushing, carefully dusting,
only ever finding
skeletons of silence
cobwebs of sound.

When cities crack, do people too,
their lives
disintegrating?
Then they seep slowly through the cracks,
drip drip,
only brittle vessels remaining.
Then I come with upturned palms of stained
-scraps and chips of-
glass,
bits and
-collage-
pieces,
mosaic pictures hobbled together from fragments.
Here, I say, I’ve salvaged what I could,
your stories,
and then capsize ashen palms into cracked vessels,
everything together lumping.
“I’m sorry it’s so disarranged, like ravaged cities

cracking.”

Link: poem by Ishtiyaq Shukri

Link: * title of prose from Call Me Not A Man by Mtutuzeli Matshoba

Link: pic – Tiny People by Bright Tal under a creative commons license

(“This is the wall built by Israel in Abu Dis, an Arab neighbourhood in East Jerusalem. It divides Abu Dis into two. The wall is a “sophisticated” means of occupying land from Palestinians.

This is the wall built by Israel in Abu Dis, an Arab a neighbourhood in East Jerusalem. It divides Abu Dis into two. The wall is a “sophisticated” means of occupying land from Palestinians.

A person living on one side of the wall cannot move to the other side to go to work or school, to visit friends or family, to go to the doctor or just to take a trip somewhere when they feel like it.

In order to do any of these ordinary things they need to get a permit from the Israeli army, which may or may not be granted.

It is about 8 metres (26 feet) high. People look tiny next to it; maybe it was designed to make them feel tiny. Being humiliated and harassed by armed soldiers on a daily basis might also make you feel tiny. It might also make you want to leave your home and move elsewhere.”)