'On pitted tracks they crept below the settlements where olive groves still smouldered. Came out only when checkpoints got them in their sights.' Photo: by Daniel Vogel on Unsplash
Another journey
Poem by Roger Iredale
A hellish trip, that drag through rocks
as blank as faces in a coma, for two
such undertravelled, simplish souls.
Their pathways glinted over carcases of hills
like ribs picked smooth by vultures where dogs
as daft as donkeys brayed the slightest scrape.
On pitted tracks they crept below the settlements
where olive groves still smouldered. Came out
only when checkpoints got them in their sights.
Supercilious soldiers bulging weapons herded
peasantry through hurdles made for sheep where
they would wait their turn while others whinged.
They skirted streamlined roads reserved in perpetuity
for occupiers’ boots; saw brutish walls that
fanged the land with mournful dragons’ breath.
Finally, met strangers loud with Babel, blatant
in their tenancies of treasured rooms, leaving only
workshops for the down-at-heel, the dispossessed.
But then arrived the shepherds, wise men, oxen,
a haloed squabbling child that seemed
to come from nowhere. It was a Coming.
