And I'm going to move into a slightly longer poem that's
in several sections.
And though they are not numbered on the page,
I will number them to make listening
a little more self-orienting.
It's a poem which is called Uprooted Olive Orchard
and obviously arises from concerns
in the same part of the world, in the Middle East.
But it also grafts into itself passages
from Plato's The Republic, the familiar myth
of men chained in a cave, whose only sense of reality
is shadows on a wall.
So that's an epistemological myth,
which I think has its political equivalents,
and particularly in instances of conflict
where civilians are involved and where questions of who
one's enemy are, become as murky as the shadows in that cave.
It was written partly out of the Balkans,
but also out of the situation in Palestine.
Uprooted Olive Orchard-- one--
what does this wall mean?
And this fence, what does it mean in our own language?
Please, repeat.
Then Is it finished?
Can you tell me what it holds?
I do not hold.
In truth, was there a god for this, god of the trees?
Am I too far ahead surviving this way, in the single moment,
shared god of the letting go?
Between us and the fire, the work, endangering.
Two-- and madness, also frenzy, Plato, also the corruption
of the philosophic mind.
Do not break crimes, and the spirit of evil spring out
of the very fullness of our human condition, ruined.
At such a time, will not a young man's heart, as they say,
leap within him?
Will any private training enable him
to stand firm against the overwhelming flood
of popular opinion?
Or will he be carried away?
In Spring, did he not gather stones out of the riverbed?
In Spring, the world not yet translation,
first truth, second truth.
In Spring, the injury not yet complete, the journey
through increasing light.
He found his brother's body in a trench of melting snow.
I knew him by his t-shirt.
I felt thankful.
Others from our village brought what they
could find home in a bucket.
Four-- I cannot remove it, cannot move it.
Are we all too far ahead?
Here is the dictionary, stone and fingers, shrapnel,
meaning neither sea, nor promised land.
I might compare the words, what they uncover, to a man
upon a cross.
The extra wedge of wood to keep the feet from tearing loose
around the nail.
Here is a cave.
Five-- but this is late again.
And these, since childhood, legs and necks chained so they
cannot move.
Above them and behind them is the blazing fire.
And Glaucon said, strange prisoners.
Six-- meanwhile, the small birds carrying their song in flight.
Meanwhile, the Finch between the branches, new
leaves paler, white as aluminum, when wind lifts the veil
and lining of the trees.
Sound continuing.
Seven-- suppose further the prison
had an echo which came through from the other side?
Is this the first land purchased in another testament
for burial, where there are trees,
or where they find the woman's son bludgeoned by stones,
so mutilated he can be identified only
by fingerprints, whose handprints reddening the wall.
Eight-- do not speak in your cave, do not.
You cannot remove it.
Early May, and early Wednesday, in a cave, in mourning,
do not speak.
It's dark.
You're not seeing much but movement, shadows.
You can't tell if they are women, children, men.
You're in survival mode.
Nine-- will he not suffer sharp pains in the glare?
Will he not be unable to see?
Will he not be unable to see the realities which
in his former state he'd seen as shadows?
Will he not suffer pain in the glare?
Ten-- there was an orchard, branches mangled in the tracks.
Eleven-- because they did not realize a woman or a child
could be carrying the grenade.