Poetry feature: Not Lost (For Marwan Barghouti)

“When the sun stands at its zenith, he is at one with our shadow; then, in the hour of incandescence, history begins.” – Heiner Müller

The old, short man takes a few steps. History is moving.
Beaten into a pulp, he gets up again.

A man with no legs, keeps standing.
A man with no voice, keeps shouting.

He is the key.
The deed to the bungalow in Rafah.
The passport of a great grandfather in Baghdad.

You can see him in action,
Old footage from the late 90s.
A parliament and a people
taking their first step into better lives.

The drum-majors have nearly murdered that memory.

Yet in death camps, you can see the impossible things.

He has a camera shoved in his face,
He has a Minister tighten a rope round his neck,
He has teenagers crack his skull –

Contradiction saves him every time.

Hopelessness is a useless thing, with cast iron weights that no one needs to carry.

The other creates fresh air.

Children don’t despair in the rubble; they don’t start eating the dust.

They cheer, sliding down what was once a floor-to-floor wall.
Playing on a swing that used to be a streetlight.

They cheer, sliding down what was once a floor-to-floor wall.
Playing on a swing that used to be a streetlight.
They go on, they’re not breaking down.

Exposed to the worst curses history has to offer,
they don’t walk it’s determined straight line.
The kids melt it with their living,
Mending it into their own game.

The ones who start to clear the wreck, gather others to follow.