Classic Poem

City streets and pavements receive me
with other people, the human tide rushes
me on. I move in this current, but only on
the surface, remaining by myself.
The tide overflows to sweep
these sidewalks and streets.
Faces, faces, faces rolling on,
dry and grim, they move on the surface,
remaining without human touch.
Here is nearness without being near.
Here is the no-presence in presence.
Here is nothing but the presence of absence!

Traffic light reddens; the tide holds back.
Bats flash across memory:
a tank passes, as I crossed in the Nablus marketplace,
I moved out of its way.
How well I've learned not to disturb
the path of traffic! How well I've memorized
traffic laws!
And now here I am, in the London slave market
where they sold my parents and people …
Here I stand, a part of the profitable deal,
carrying the brunt of the sin—
Mine was that I am a plant
grown by the mountains of Palestine.
Ah! Those who died yesterday are at rest now.
(I suspect that their corpses cursed me
as I gave way for a tank to pass,
then moved on in the stream.)
Aisha's letter is on my desk,
Nablus is quiet, life flowing on
like river water …
The prison seal is an eloquent silence
(A guard tells her the trees have fallen,
the woods are not set ablaze anymore.
But Aisha insists the forest is thick,
trees standing like fortresses. She dreams
of the forest she left blazing with fire
five years ago. She heard the thunder
of wind in her dream, tells the guard:
“I don't believe you, you're one of them,
and you remain the Prophets of the Lie.”
Then she crouches in the darkness of prison, dreaming.
Shaded by her standing trees she is joyous at the sound
of the far forest rattling with swords of flame.
And Aisha dreams and dreams.)

The traffic light clicks green, the tide drives on.
My memory flits away, bats fall into a deep well.
A shadow changes direction, follows me,
sends out a bridge.
—Are you a stranger like I am?
Two drops separate from the tide,
sit removed in a corner of the park.
—Do you like Osborne?
—Who doesn't?
—England's elderly and its officers
setting with the sun of Suez …
—Who do you think will plant tomorrow's tree
for this country?
—The hippie youth.
—You are sour, very sour.
The hippie tide passes by,
sweeping the city.
London keeps beat with
the toll of Big Ben.
—Around the corner
there's a pub and an elegant hotel
with central heating—will you come?
—Impossible!
A London lady passes, complaining to her dog
of arthritis and a pinched sciatic nerve.
—Impossible!
—Aren't you a modern woman?
—I've grown beyond the days of rashness;
sorrow has made me a hundred years old. Impossible!
I remove his arm from my shoulders.
—I'm besieged by loneliness;
—We're all besieged by loneliness;
we're all alone, play along with life alone,
suffer alone, and die by ourselves.
You will remain alone here, even if a hundred
women embrace you!
City streets and sidewalks swallow us with others,
a human tide sweeping us away in waves of faces.
We remain on the surface, touching nothing.