By Ramona Wadi

reciting the vacillations of exile
in decades marked by
the erosion of twilight

a sonorous punctuation
of language lacerated
by fire and bludgeoning
touching nothing but memory
an insatiable horizon, mingling
with hands that caress
remnants of earth divided
by fabricated impositions
barriers
on indigenous terrain

a constant recital of language
in voices threatened
by recollections of blood
and its itinerant pathways
mocking a tear’s irrepressible desire
to nurture implosions unpublished
like the shade beneath a burnt olive tree
a relic of intimacy
between soil, harvest and hands
the murdered, recurring existence
of scattered fragments
dreaming of a visage
that opens land like a willing wound
welcoming whispers of withering history
away from the invented ancestry
and the rampages of fictional descendants

– Ramona Wadi contributed this poem to PalestineChronicle.com.