Online Journal of Peace
and Conflict Resolution 1.1 -- March 1998
NOT IN YOUR WAR ANYMORE
A collection of
poetry written by Ada
A. Aharoni, Ph.D.
Copyright 1997 - Ada A. Aharoni - All Rights Reserved.
To Haim
With much love
How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the
messenger of good tidings that announces peace!
Isaiah 52
He who walks with peace walks with him...
The Koran
I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
Wilfred Owen
Contents:
Not in Your War Anymore
I Want to Kill You War
A Green Week
Scientist
Pollution
Metal and Violets in Jerusalem
The Second Exodus
Arab Israeli Student on T.V.
The Sulha Pomegranate
If a White Horse from Jerusalem
Grandmother and the Wolf
Earth Day 1995
Mothers You Know
Teddy Bears for Guns
Peace is a Woman and a Mother
The More Interesting Life
From Haifa to Near Faraway Cairo
A Bridge of Peace
My House
Cosmic Woman
Killing Me Softly
You Cannot Bomb Me Anymore
Palm Curve
500 Years Ago
What is Peace to Me?
Unicorn in Manhattan's Cloisters
A Bicentennial Visit to Plymouth Plantation
Wilfred Owen: We Are Still Deaf
Sound of Peace
To an Egyptian Soldier
In Memory of My Uncle Jacques
The Sapling of Peace
The Snake on the Watermelon Skin
Abdul's Children
Breathing
To a Soldier
This Cursed War
Remember Me Every Time the Moon Rises Over the Sphinx
In Darkness
I Opened the Door
Who Did Everything On Time?
On Yom Kippur
Seaweed
Trigger Fingers
Take Us to Soweto
Africa Sings Freedom
NOT IN YOUR WAR ANYMORE
While watching and admiring the tantalizing foliage
(Penn State University, Pa.)
"War is as anachronistic as cannibalism,
slavery and colonialism..."
Rosalie Bertell, No Immediate Answer
I am not in your war anymore.
Surely we cannot paint war green
when even the long Cold War is dying,
so let's paint it in all its true
foliage colors, to help its fall
First, flowing flamboyant crimson blood
on throbbing temples and hands,
then russet bronze fiery metal cartridges
stuffing the crevices of young hearts
while golden laser Napalm dragon tongues
gluttonously lick the sizzling eyes and lips
of our children, under the giant mushrooms
freshened by mustard and acid rain
Surely, at the close of our
great atomic century
we will soon find the archaic
history tree, where we can dump
our fearful bottle legacy
And our grandchildren will ask their fathers,
what were tanks for, Pa? And with eyes
full of wonder, they will read the story of the
glorious imprisonment of the Nuclear Giant
in his bottle, corked for ever, and will say:
Well done Pa, well done Ma!
I Want to Kill You War
I want to kill you war, forever,
not like a phoenix
that always comes back
I want to kill you war
and I don't know how
and I don't know why
all the people of the world
don't join hands
to kill you war --
you the greatest murderer
of them all.
They just know how to kill
the one or the two
or the hundreds and the thousands,
but not you,
you the greatest killer
of them all.
So, we will kill you war,
before you kill us.
This is real deterrence strategy,
not the useless liar one we're so busy with.
All the peace marchers of the world
Will take the heavy metal cases
full of nuclear wastes
and dump them over War's head,
the cases will leak, as usual,
and War will dissolve back into his archaic bottle
where he belongs --
We shut the cork.
A Green Week
A week like fresh mint,
a green week spreading
its fragrance to the roots
of my being
"Have a green week!"
My father used to bless us
on Saturday nights,
"Have a green year"
he beamed,
brandishing a fresh mint sprig
over our curly heads -
and give it back
to the world
fully blossoming.
Who will give me
a green week
now that he's dead?
Now that the Gates of Heaven
are shut, and we
dump our grayish nuclear waste
in the belly depths
of our innocent green earth?
Only peace science
Only peace technology
Only peace, ushering
A World Beyond War.
Myopic Scientist
With green eyes like legend woods
before burning,
waving and sweeping
like sky rockets
You are created
for exploring and building,
for love and science and joy
on peaceful green earth
not to burn, not to destroy our hopes
with nuclear bombs
and radiation
Dear scientist, don't let the war merchants
steal your research, your unaware souls,
your creation, your bubbling myopic brains.
All our voices radiate in fear
all our violins sing our impending requiem
brewed in your stupendous high-tech labs.
Dear scientist, let our wings flap freely
in fresh, clean breeze in the spring and in the fall
before we fall into the
atrocious nuclear winter brewed in your
stupendous reactors before they blow up
as in Three Mile Island, as in Chernobyl.
Dear scientist, don't allow the war mongers
to gobble up your inventions to fatten their stomachs
for star wars and earth wars
or for any, any uncivil civil war.
This poem, written in Amir Gilboa's style, is
dedicated to the memory of this great, late Israeli poet.
Pollution
"After a nuclear winter the living will envy the dead."
U.N. Peace Exhibition, NYC, 1990
When I see a bird
and I say bird
they say bird
When I hear its song
and I say song
they say song
But when I see bombs
and I say bombs
they say peacemakers
And when I see nuclear pollution
and I say radiation
they say energy
And when I see nuclear pollution
and I say nuclear holocaust
THEY SAY DETERRENCE.
But what kind of deterrence
Can be had
When we are all dead dead.
Metal and Violets in Jerusalem
In a time of pomegranates
and yellow balloons,
why are your looks
so bronze-like?
Deep in you
a valve is locked,
and even a warm
yearning clasp
cannot unlock
the metallic clasp.
How can I unpuzzle
your dreams?
I wish I could sow
violets under your pores
until their scent
melted your metal
into mine,
I wish I could place
Jerusalem
in your hand.
The
Second Exodus
Today, I again bring my grain vessel
to the docks of your granary, father -
while breathing the wheat smells you loved,
me in Dagon Silo in Haifa,
you far away back in Cairo.
Joseph in Egypt land, Canaanite jugs,
ritual bronze sickles from temples,
crushing-stones, mill-stones and mortars -
all link me back to you
on old rusty scales.
I remember your orange-beige office
in Cairo's Mouski,
with deaf Tohami weighing
the heavy sacks of flour and grain
on old rusty scales.
And me listening unaware
to the birds' chirped warning
on the beams of your ceiling:
"Wandering Jew, open your Jewish eyes,
you will soon have to spread your wings
again, and look for new nest."
Mighty Dagon's giant arms storing in bulk,
fill my own silo with tears
that you are not here with me
to view this wonder
deftly handling bread to Israel - the land you so loved
but are not buried in.
For you dear father, I plant today a garden of grain,
for you, who always taught us
how to sow.
Arab Israeli Student on T.V.
You ponder hard in front of hesitating microphone,
Your eyebrows arch puzzlement over the screen.
Nuances of troubled expression on your handsome Semitic face,
Crack and recrack every query in the air:
"Do I really feel at home here?
And if I do, do they feel I feel at home here,
Am at home here?
Do I feel an Israeli Arab? Or an Arab Israeli?
Or a Palestinian? Or all of these? (Or none of these?)"
Suddenly the answer blurts out like a raven in flight
Escaping its dark cage: "I have no identity!"
The raven flies straight into my eyes with claws and beak.
And I remember my own rootless wound
In Egypt land - And I hurt your dangling hurt,
My Semitic cousin in pain.
The questions stir Nile and Jordan visions
Flowing intense churning -
"And if a Palestinian State is founded
Would you go and live there?
Would you feel better?"
Again the puckered brows locked,
Strained jaw-muscles, glowing sorrowful eyes.
Then gently, like a dove swooping
On its way to peaceful green woods:
"My home is in Galilee. But I would feel better
if there were a Palestinian State,
For then my Arab brothers would not fight
The land I live in -
Any more."
Reconciliation: Sulha Pomegranate
Why doesn't Israel explain this more - that you too
and a million other Jews of Arab Lands like you,
had to spread their wings wide and flee too?
But why do you want Israel
to explain this more?
What is it to you? Let's open the pomegranate?
For me it is the saving face of Sulha
The uncovering of the black veil
on the face of Amina, the truthful, the just
It shows we're not the only underdogs, for
tragedy, as in all wars, you see, was on both sides!
It makes it easier to pave the Sulha path, you see
not that two tragedies cancel one another
but it makes it an easier burden to bear over our heads,
when we know the other has already paid
for the Sulha long before
it all, all began ... wait, don't cut
the pomegranate yet.
Now I can identify with you
my cousin in pain
and you can identify with me -
my Middle Eastern friend, cousin and
mutual victim in pain.
Now, let's open the Sulha Pomegranate.
***
*Sulha: Reconciliation, in Arabic.
If a White Horse from Jerusalem
If a white horse from golden Jerusalem,
bearing a message from the land of global peace
strides so valiantly
in the early dawn hours
of my own street,
as if it were the ocean
as if it were the bright blue sky -
then all is possible
Perhaps, he has come
with a magic
to make all chains of weapons vanish,
and to make you fly with me.
Perhaps, before my hair falls
my teeth clatter,
before my breath whistles
and I suffocate
in the infamous nuclear fumes
of a nuclear winter.
Perhaps, he will lift us
on his white wings
and raise the world to year 2000 beyond wars,
for if a white horse
from the land of global peace,
strides so valiantly
in my own street - as if it were the ocean,
as if were the sky
Then all is possible...
Grandmother and the Wolf
Dedicated to Ebba Haslund
from Norway
She looked at me with wise
bluebell eyes
and told me the brothers Grimm
had it all wrong,
they had it all wrong, you see,
for it was the grandmother
who gobbled up the big bad wolf
and not the other way round.
They had it all wrong,
they were too grim,
those brothers Grimm,
they had it all wrong,
for grandmothers you see
are very strong.
Earth Day
We did not know we were all
rooted sunflowers,
with falling seeds
on deadly land-mines--
nuclear waste disposal
in leaking metal cases,
contaminating our groundwater
in our front and back garden,
hidden under the compost pile.
We did not know,
because they never told us.
They stole stealthily in the dark
and dumped their radiation and destruction
in our front and backyard--
without even asking our permission.
They knew we would not give it anyway,
so they carefully covered
the compost pile
with grass clippings
and green leaves, thinking,
those drowsy sunflowers
only turn their heads to the sun,
and will never notice.
I'm tired of watching the sunshine
when fire is burning under
my roots.
Mothers You Know
"We can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and
following your methods but by finding new words and creating new
methods."
Virginia Woolf Three Guineas
Mothers you know, a long time ago
have been wisely decreed
by diverse human creeds and needs -
goddesses of peace-in-the-home,
lavishly giving life, love and healing
through their wombs and life-blood
And they have been quite successful
those cosy peace-in-the-home mothers,
closely guarding us with their wisdom
their tender words and watchful eyes.
Surely safer than in a Nuclear War
or in a new World War, or just a tiny war,
so what about making mothers
the guardians of peace on earth?
Surely we wouldn't be so much worse?
And they are so available those mothers -
you can even find them in enemy land...
Look at the terrible mess they have
made of our blue planet, mother,
you are the only one who can save us now,
the only one who really knows
how to protect your fearful children
weeping over their drugged ailing world,
the only one who can heal it now, mother
cradling it in your warm, loving arms.
Teddy Bears for Guns
My man of the year
Is the wonderful, wise one
Who sat himself in the midst
Of the West with a huge box
Of chubby Teddy Bears
On New Year's Day,
Attracting an endless
Queue of cheering kids -
Holding guns
He playfully showed
With a smile and a wink
And a Teddy Bear hug -
It could be the beginning
Of a honey-laden decade
In a brave new world
By wisely trading
Guns
For Teddy Bears.
Peace Is A Woman and a Mother
How do you know
peace is a woman?
I know, for
I met her yesterday
on my winding way
to the world's fare.
She had such a sorrowful face
just like a golden flower faded
before her prime.
I asked her why
she was so sad?
She told me her baby
was killed in Auschwitz,
her daughter in Hiroshima
and her sons in Vietnam,
Ireland, Israel, Lebanon,
Bosnia, Rwanda and Chechnya.
All the rest of her children, she said,
are on the nuclear
black-list of the dead ,
all the rest, unless
the whole world understands --
that peace is a woman
A thousand candles then lit
in her starry eyes, and I saw --
Peace is indeed a pregnant woman,
Peace is a mother.
The More Interesting Life
Come closer sisters
hear the man
and what he sang about us.
At twelve, a sharp bayonet fear
jabbing through my ribs
tickled my mind.
You are a male,
you will have to go to war,
you may be killed.
Shrieking shells
and giant mushrooms flying
filled my blazing nightfalls.
I looked at the lively girls, envy nibbling,
they will not go to war,
they will not be killed.
But suddenly a flash -
a vision of kitchen sinks
drying of dishes with feminine hair,
a life of soiled diapers . . .
The bayonet externalized,
I held it with firm fist
and nodded reassured.
But I shall have
the more interesting life.
That's it sisters, that's what he sang,
what he sang about us,
What do we do now with what he sang,
What he sang about us?
From Haifa to Near Faraway Cairo
I recall the velvet sugar-cane juice
we drank together
with the smooth blue air
under the open skies,
the sunflower seeds
we cracked together
with jokes
echoing laughter in the sun.
How sweet the roasted sweet-potatoes
were in those rainbow days
of pretty sugar dolls.
But unlike you dear Kadreya,
Friend of my sunny schooldays,
I was told that I was just
a visiting guest
though born in the land of the Nile.
Ordered by Egypt my Jewish wings
to spread
to search for a new nest,
I have found it on Mount Carmel
and here I mean to stay.
My foremost wish today
is our soldier sons
to bathe
in the peaceful rays
their mothers wove
when younger than they
in the near faraway rainbow days.
A Bridge of Peace
"They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree,
and none shall make them afraid."
(Micah, 4, 4).
My Arab sister,
Let us build a sturdy bridge
Form your olive world to mine,
From my orange world to yours,
Above the boiling pain
Of acid rain prejudice -
And hold human hands high
Full of free stars
Of twinkling peace
I do not want to be your oppressor
You do not want to be my oppressor,
Or your jailer
Or my jailer,
We do not want to make each other afraid
Under our vines
And under our fig trees
Blossoming on a silvered horizon
Above the bruising and the bleeding
Of Poison gases and scuds.
So, my Arab sister,
Let us build a bridge of
Jasmine understanding
Where each shall sit with her baby
Under her vine and under her fig tree -
And none shall make them afraid
AND NONE SHALL MAKE THEM AFRAID.
My House
I was a pale
ivory tower, surrounded
by white marble slabs
until you came
into my house
You deftly climbed my hidden stairs
gently pushed open by secret windows,
alighting upon vaulted mosaic
my curves smoothly answered
your precise angles.
I offered you my heart as fireplace,
my hands as gloves
to keep you warm,
my ears as vessels
for your words
Laying the lozenges of your life
on my hearth
you lit my fireplace
filled me with warmth,
lonely tower became cosy home.
I am glad you came to inhabit me
before our summer is spent,
before we tumble down
in the mighty tornado
of a nuclear winter.
Cosmic Woman
They tell us
you were first born
in
warm ocean womb
caressed by sun fingers -
daughter perhaps
of the stormy love
of two unruly atoms
maddened by the solitude
of eternal rounds
in the steppes of
times
And your children,
lively descendants
of their stellar nucleus mother
dropped from the sky
in depths of ocean belly,
born of green and brown seaweed
and the laughs and cries
of a blue bacteria
Cosmic woman,
when you chose earth
as home for your vast roots
at the beginning
of the great human family,
it was for life --
not for death.
Cosmic woman,
you, who were born of the nucleus,
from deadly nuclear mushroom
Save your children
SAVE YOUR CHILDREN.
Killing Me Softly
"If we are honest with ourselves we have to admit that unless
we rid ourselves of our nuclear arsenals a holocaust not only might occur
but will occur if not today, then tomorrow ... We have come to live on
borrowed time."
Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth
We wise grown-ups often advise our children
"Stop fighting, you will hurt each other,"
then calmly proceed to annihilate one another.
We breed black widows with red eyes in our labs.
War is eternal, you say.
Listen, my brother,
War's second cousin, "duelling," was once sung immortal,
the peak of honor and reason -
yet has been banished from our world and is no more.
Slavery redeemed eternal, and is no more.
And so much more, like killing me softly
with your guns and scuds
Does a lioness devour her cubs?
Does a gardener destroy his buds?
Let's awake and change our absurd "nuclear deterrence song",
for now we know,
in a nuclear war, or any war,
there are no winners any more.
We breed black widows with red eyes in our labs.
Let's remember in our canines in the blood of our temples
in a nuclear war or any small war, there ar no winners anymore,
and throw War quickly in the historic dirt-bin it deserves,
Let's not leave this terrible legacy to our chikldren
in the twenty-first century,
Let's save cubs and buds before the fall,
or in the nuclear pit we'll all fall.
You Cannot Bomb Me Anymore
Listen, little big man,
you cannot bomb me
anymore
because I don't allow you
to bomb me anymore
nor to choke
nor rape me anymore,
for I have my own strength now
and my own creative
peace business now
With this woman's mind
this woman's body
this woman's heart -
we don't allow you
to bomb us anymore
for our sisters in Norway
have shown us the way
and now -
you cannot, cannot, cananot bomb us
anymore.
For it was
the grandmother
who ate the big bad wolf
and not the other way round --
so now
we will not allow you
to bomb us, bomb us,
ANYMORE.
Palm Curve
Cud