While two sleek dots roar overhead,
I set out on foot for Scopus mount:
My first such visit in seven years.
At once I am engulfed in thick exhaust
Emitted from a van obliged by recent law
To park upon the sidewalk of the street.<\/p>\n
In morbid vein I trudge through West Jerusalem,
Till halted by the new de facto front –
A monstrous symbol of human haste –
Municipal Highway Number One:
No doubt for certain fundamentalists
The road referred to by a sacred bard
Down which at "End of Days"
Will stroll the region’s folk in peace.<\/p>\n
At last a lull. I dash across
And find, with joy, Sheikh Jarah little changed.
My pulse slows down as up the hill
I go. But what is this!:
The Shepherd’s Hotel, serene before, an ugly army base.<\/p>\n
Above the ever-bulldozed Wadi Joz
Gleams Hebrew University on Scopus ridge
Where, midst a maze of airport corridors
Or packed in airtight halls
Named after stars, like Ronald Reagan and his wife,
Our future leaders bide their time:
There’s no way back to Mother Earth.<\/p>\n
Before escaping from this lunar fort 12 January 1994<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While two sleek dots roar overhead,I set out on foot for Scopus mount:My first such visit in seven years.At once I am engulfed in thick exhaustEmitted from a van obliged by recent lawTo park upon the sidewalk of the street. In morbid vein I trudge through West Jerusalem,Till halted by the new de facto front […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,19,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelpeach.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelpeach.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelpeach.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelpeach.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelpeach.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelpeach.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelpeach.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelpeach.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelpeach.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Impaled upon Rift Valley’s western brim,
Beyond the concrete mushrooms known as settlements
(Whose access roads have pierced and scarred
A beauty I recall with grief)
Through sealed glass pane I catch a glimpse
Of that memento mori great –
Itself now threatened by hubristic Man:
Yam ha-Melakh<\/em> or Dead Sea. <\/p>\n\n
<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n