O arrogant, myopic leaders,
Revivers of a destructive ideal,
You have defiled the secret
Of Israel’s miraculous survival:
Belief in Divine Empathy.
Conceited, stiff-necked and hard-hearted:
Biblical adjectives all.
Should they behold today Imperial Jerusalem,
The Prophets would feel regrettably at home.
Two thousand years of suffering wasted!
Collective punishment is your ethic;
A head for an eye, a city for a soldier.
When will you perceive, short-sighted Zealots,
That you have poisoned the body politic;
Cut off the means of creative vision?
As to your attempts to provoke Islam,
In order to avoid the challenge of peace,
Please know that, when your temple starts to fall
Beneath the blows of blind Jihad,
There’ll be no Samson to hold it up.
Jerusalem
22 March 1992