Monument

Monument

1.

“Who would put graffiti on her head?
Why would someone scar so sweet a thing?”
he asks. In the silence she smiles,
points to shards in the sand. “A long
time ago. Ages. Old wars, old weapons.
See where the spearhead struck, the gash
Below the breast.
Last week in Beirut
We saw a woman killed, a bomb, a mad
Uncertain soldier fired into a mosque
And turned away, searching for some other
Thing to shoot, yes, a thing, not stone,
But made of flesh and blood. Yet, we weep
To see a form of marble gashed, marred.
Look. No tears. No blood runs down her side.”



2.

They look across the river, minarets,
spires, golden in the too bright sun,
see tanks, Humvees, attack helicopters,
a canvas of red and beige, towers falling.
“Here Muhammad walked and Abraham.
An old tower reached heavenward, mystics
spoke of a garden to the south, a snake,
a woman tricked, a man love-besotted,
a child killed in that first light.”
“But we have come so far,” he said.
“All those centuries, all that history.”
The statue seems to smile. “So beautiful,
so fair.” “Nothing's changed,” she says.
“We walk on the same land they walked
and do the same old things. Nothing's
changed, only this…we kill so many
we cannot count the dead, nor give them
names as the old mother did.”
Her statue crumbles. She listens to the dead.


H. Palmer Hall

Posted over on The Literary Works of H. Palmer Hall
(Originally published in Mizna: a Journal of Arab American Culture )