The question now is whether Israel’s mind
Shall further take the age-old tyrant view
That he who holds and rules Jerusalem
Controls the countless "persons of the Book".
If so, the bloody syndrome will prevail:
With power-seeking, Godless pimps in league
With uncreative, thoughtless theocrats
Against a world in urgent need of Light.
This "virgin" siren whose chiselled rocks have wrecked
So many searching, naive, thirsty souls;
This false symbol of unity and peace
Who breeds divisive war is not to blame.
If Israel wants a "Messianic Age",
He first must free her from the artful spell
Cast by his myth-makers in Temple times.
By nature no endowed oasis she,
But stony ridge with one, erratic spring.
Though far too late to let her be herself
(An old, Semitic, desert matriarch),
He can improve her artificial lot
By adding parks and gardens; planting trees.
Who knows? maybe, if treated like a wife,
She’d play no more the crafty, vengeful whore
Whose unsuspected draughts make stiff his neck
And clinging, acid fogs corrode his bones,
And whose supreme desire has ever been
The final fall of Man through lust for her.
On second thoughts, perhaps they should divorce
And, rather than lovers, live as loving friends.
That way he and his brother Palestine
Could share what is in truth their mutual dam,
And neither need to have her for himself.
Jerusalem
10 October 1994