About two years ago I wrote a poem called “wall“. This is an attempt to revise it.
One ball, two balls
three balls up on the wall.
wall so big, so thick,
it has a roof and a top.
Counting has always been a hobby of mine
Before I even memorized the Fatiha verse, I would count
the lines when I cross the street,
the houses when I sit in the back seat,
and the huge slabs of concrete:
A WALL
a demon that haunts us as we move from the space of Jerusalem to its neighboring Ramallah.
The yellow Ford transit skids past it, but it keep on following us
a looming, gray pieces rise as if evoking Hades to be;
garnished with a metal wire
greyer than the sky above
it captures birds, ai and dreams
and a collection that the wall keeps
includes little boys’ footballs in Shufaat and Beit Hanina
I count the balls, count the sorrows
count the attempts to retrieve and reprieve the death sentence of my people
count the failures of feeling free.
The car stops and the wall has a stop too, in the shape of a checkpoint
I stop counting, we wait and we pass
so the wall continues to grow on my right.
AICHA BINT YUSIF 