Micaela Kaibni Raen

“We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters.”
—Uri Lubrani, Prime Minister Ben-Gurion’s special adviser on Arab Affairs, 1960
 

To wait tables

              for those

              who can consume at any price what we cannot afford

              who laugh about our dirt roads and by-ways of dust

              who eat, ravenous for dessert, because their life is too short

                            while ours is too cold and too long

would not be as bad

as our walled deprivation.

​

To cut wood

              for those

              who build houses over our homes

                            that we have lost and cannot build again

              for those

              who know not the value of breath, our breath

would not be as bad

as the poverty of cement-floor beds.

​

To wait tables

              for those

              who excavate the soul’s geography

                            bulldozing over our meridians of stone and parched earth

              to cut wood

              for those

              who build condos over our coffins

              who devour latitude and longitude

                            mapping over our arid bones

              who divert water leaving only tears to swallow

would not be as bad

as the poppies’ blood-red dance for rain in smoldering sand.