2016-03-14



''A wall always has two sides," said the worker
''A wall always has two sides," said the poet
''A wall only has one side," said the soldier
''A wall only has one side," said the politician
''A wall only has one side," said the villager
"Walls don't exist," said the prisoner
"Walls don't exist," said the child
"Walls don't exist," said the lovers 
A house is born from no earth
No sky or stars
No trees
A house, one day, will be everything
You'll move in, you'll leave it
You'll be evicted, expelled, it will be illegally occupied
It will be paradise and hell
An ideal attained, a nightmare come to life 
"I don't have time to die," says the living man
"I don't have time for resurection," says the dead man
From the two sides of the wall
Two sides of the bones 
The poet says "I saw that in my childhood—a house
.....swallowed up
In the dark of night." 
--from 'A House and a Wall'; Emmanuel  Moses (trans. by Marilyn Hacker)

[via poetry daily]




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