Wayward Child of God, Still
No verse of Shakespeare, no song of Roland, no tale of Beowulf, no fruit of ancient fabled poet rich with rhyme and meter is this. Nor of such things herein did they sing, for never was there cause till now for such lament as for this nation who would be God’s.
1
Israel, oh, Israel,
Self-gloried child of God,
Scarred as all peoples are scarred,
Driven from one home
To resuscitate, suffer, and die
In others throughout the world!
Did your wide venue not satisfy
That you sought out land abandoned
Centuries since and from that world of yore
Think to carve your way back
Into God's heart?
And in your fond return
Have you not again offended?
2
Did you not find on that land
Sedulous stewards,
Centuries at the watch,
Husbandmen of fields,
Shepherds of flocks
Impeding your jealous ambition?
Did it not prick your rage to hear
Heathen deny you were God’s people
And they were not, to mock
Your charge that, as mere squatters
On God's land, they must away?
3
Worst offense,
These heathen were not people.
You were God's chosen
Returned to God's land.
Those in Jordan were Jordanians.
Those in Lebanon Lebanese.
Those in Syria Syrians.
Those tending sheep in Palestine
Landless Arabs that must away.
Can clearing from holy ground
Those of no identity, of no history,
Mere flotsam of centuries, offend?
Can one offend the muskrat?
4
To discourage the muskrat,
Indeed, encourage its away,
Did you not build "the iron wall"?
Buy up land from absent landlords,
Each purchase a pensive shepherd's
Diminishment, each acquisition
A removal of yet more stewards
Who had tilled the fields,
Shepherded herds,
Doted on goat and hive
Throughout the centuries of
Your absence, oh, Israel?
In denying them their ancient livelihoods,
Did you not render ancient farmers penniless,
Your commodious ploy to spirit them off
To Arab neighbors with promises of life
Refused them here?
5
But they did not fold their tents
And away in the night.
So did you not then heap hardships
On their heads in uncompromising rebuke?
Beseech housewives to boycott Arab stores?
Smash Arab eggs?
Douse kerosene on Arab tomatoes?
(Oh, what Arab objects had your kerosene
To feed to flames in future!)
6
Yet, wary of recalling
To the weary world
The specter of apartheid
(For of world opinion were you ever wary),
Did you not choose to eschew self-incriminating
Abuse of your heathen and connive instead
A maneuver to pluck its entirety
From your resuscitating homeland?
And did not shrill rabble protest
Inform your conviction that never
Would your maneuver, be it so kind,
So clever, so carefully woven to
Placate indigenous petulance,
Find indigenous resonance?
Did you not, in fact, then know
That never would the noisome Arab
Heathen agree to away?
And thereupon was not your resolution
Hatched for military redress,
Upon which wisdom you engaged
By all means national,
International, licit or not,
To build your force and visit it,
With vengeance, too,
Upon mulish Arab heads?
7
Still they did not fold their tents
And away in the night.
So it was left to you,
So help you God,
For the good of all,
To drive those godless herds
Into a Gaza, there to
Confine, soapless,
On malnutrition diets
(You had studied how),
Strictly rationed water
(This mere guesswork),
Reduced to savaging
circumstances,
With rebukes to:
"Fester there!"
8
And weren't you now free
To pursue without compromise
Your cherished goal?
Though Arabs gasped by day, by night,
An exhalation away from death
(Which misery wouldn't you cease
But for coveted world opinion?),
They were away enough
For your project building God's
Unadulterated state to proceed,
Except —
9
They festered well in filth.
How it galled to watch,
And how you watched!
Atop walls, through fences, by drone,
Where's Daddy mobile apps,
As they harvested olives, eggplant, tomatoes,
Citrus fruits exported to you by the ton.
Built universities, hospitals, families.
Festering indeed!
Their numbers doubling
Every cursed generation.
Tenacious vermin that yet longed to return
To lands and homes, gardens and fields,
Herds and trees that didn't you
Assiduously demolish
(As if you could kill dirt
Or rid the earth of its worms)?
Your aim to extinguish vermin hope,
Blight vermin fondness to return,
Mock vermin yearning to revisit ash and ruin
Failed.
Why, oh, Israel, did you not see
In the tenacity of this vermin
The hand of your God?
10
What you in vermin endurance saw
Was pure evil draped in Arab dross,
Its agency intent, in every beating heart,
On extermination of you, God's chosen.
Foul discovery, indeed!
Was this not the sign — oh, finally —
To dispense with mercy and
Dispatch these godless wretches
To their hell?
To no effect had you destroyed their
Land, home, history, identity, hope.
Was it not now clear you must be rid
Of the very fiber of the beast?
But how rid oneself of creatures' fibers
You yourself have caged?
If driven out, would they not but scatter
And shed, fester and pullulate?
All dedicated, you knew,
To your destruction.
11
Impossible to release,
You gripped instead,
Tightening constraints
Of years gone by.
But did you,
In your iron defense
Of God's people, not mock
Your people's God?
For, speak truthfully, Israel, does it not
Mock life to withhold as you did,
Voluntarily, arbitrarily, pitilessly, too,
From God’s life life's essentials?
Is it not but mockery
To painstakingly starve captives?
To lure famished boys into starting pens
With fat promises of food to take,
Not for themselves, but to family
Too weak to come, too weak to race,
Too weak to scrap, this scrappy
Spark of life their last hope?
To laugh behind your rifles, adjusting sights
To pick the day's chosen part off those
Scrappy, hopeful boys
As they sprint at gunshot to glean
What lentils lie scattered in the dust
From packages torn apart by swifter boys,
Skimpy gladiators all, all serving alike
As mayhap trophies of the day's shoot?
To reduce caring mothers to strange passivity,
A finger tracing lines across the cushioning muck
To probe the chance for even one digestible grain
To assuage the hunger of an infant long past starving,
Shriveled these last slow months to
An unrecognizable sack of staring bones,
An absurd abundance of skin
For so little substance?
To make even sweet water, so very dear,
Oh, Israel, so very scarce
That even the vermin cried out
While you filled your pools,
Aqua-hued and gleaming,
Not so very far away?
Did you not, in so doing,
Oh, Israel, mock your God?
12
But thus did you precipitate
(That it took so long!)
Their crude escape
From your smart cage
(For, truth to speak, what
Intelligence contains a virus?)
And in forcing their rash breach,
Unmask their true nature and
Exhibit to the world this orgy
Of their violence and fury,
Hounds of vengeance and slaughter,
Bloated with vows to destroy you,
God's people.
A veritable godsend,
Their evil thus exposed, the animals
Were now ripe for, fit only for
Righteous annihilation.
And you, with speed of righteous
Conviction, proceeded.
13
But woe! Your thorough vengeance
Did betray you.
Behind merciless onslaught
World opinion came to doubt the
Exigency of your defense.
For was your starved devil not caged,
Wasted, weak, sick from
Sewage living?
Were not these, your mortal foes —
Perfectly trapped by smart you —
Helpless marks of your smart fire?
How, though dying in droves,
Did they remain potent enemies still?
Why, though they dropped like flies,
Did you redouble determination
To get the job done? What job?
A job not yet done — Not yet?
A job not done until — you said it
— annihilation.
Nothing else would satisfy.
14
Though the Palestinian did not exist,
You freely admitted Hamas did,
Whose annihilation required
annihilation of the nonexistent
Palestinian once your sly accusation revealed
That cowardly Hamas took cover
Within every starved nonexistent Arab skin
Huddled wasted, weak, and sick
Behind your so-smart fence.
Thus were you compelled
To strike them down to a beast
And accordingly remorselessly
Bent yourself to the task until,
Speak truthfully, oh, Israel,
Didn’t righteous self-defense,
Begin, in your nostrils, too, to reek
Of something else?
15
Again, woe! Oh, Israel,
You could not finish the job,
Not because the world would interfere,
But because, you, lord of the field,
Miscalculated your earthly powers
In vowing to disappear anything,
A people, perhaps, who do not exist.
Did you not know such wearisome work
Would consume a century of your energy?
Or that annihilation is no task for man,
Nor for nature, either, which itself
Is nothing but rank, incessant
Bursting of seed into shape and form
Of improbable weight, improbable lightness,
Imperceptible delicacy, impalpable airiness,
Filamentary strength, exquisite texture,
Lustrous color, beguiling scintillation,
A web of sound and locomotion propelled
By scale, horn, padded foot, webby feet,
Membranes, diaphragms, fur, feather,
Each strand and gleam a miracle as suited
As fingers to the hand for
Fight, flight, feeding, mating,
All to bring forth more and more and more life?
Neither for man nor nature, dear Israel,
Annihilation is power reserved for gods.
16
And bethink yourself, Israel,
What Creator would diminish Himself
At His own creatures' behest?
Were you wiser, you would not dare
For shame to annoy God's ears
With demands He destroy
Creatures of his Palestine
And for your sake alone
Visit destruction unto
The very last of their kin.
17
Nor, benighted Israel,
Did you remark that
As tides change,
So do gods.
Your God, once green,
Did once command slaughter.
But does He now? Your
God of a mere thousand years
Was need-be rough
To capture heed
Of rough worshippers.
Over millennia, bloated foul
From fetid battle breath,
Sated sick of bloodbath
Rituals encrusting towns entire,
A god, matured, wants no guts now,
But is content with the pasture and cud,
The olive, the goat, the bee.
18
Alas, oh, Israel, you did grow
So estranged from your God
As not to know his affection
Extended over the centuries
To embrace even those who
Watch sheep,
Tend olives, hives,
Wish no riches but what
The olive yields, the herds
And bees bring forth,
Covet neither fame nor glory,
Urban grandeur, national renown.
To be stewards of God's holy land
Contented them, which contented God.
19
And to say your God enjoined you seize
From such stewards a land promised
You two thousand years since
(When gods were green),
Was this holy sanction or figment?
For has He not, speak truthfully,
These thousand years been silent?
20
But none of these, oh, Israel,
Is your worst offense,
The which lies in your not marking
How arrogance beguiled
You to fashion a god of monotony
Who would dote on you alone.
Consider, wayward child of God,
What muted victory,
What needy world,
What stunted future
Must proceed
When shrunk
To the dimensions
Of your lonely genius
If it were to come to pass that
Your simple god,
In slaking your ancient bloodlust
To quiet your feral fears,
Would allow that you alone should rise,
And others not?
- A line from the traditional Scottish song “The Parting Glass.” Lyrics vary between modern arrangements; as sung by Hozier at https://youtu.be/Y-BmOhjbQ44?si=7NGqRlyyo1gPUncT beginning at 0:24. ↩︎