721 Dome of the Rock - a poem by the late Edward A. Lacey, from THIRD WORLD

Comment (Peter Myers) : The poem Dome of the Rock (which appears below)
is online at
Interstellar Communication Difficulties
http://www.pairlist.net/pipermail/austin-ghetto-list/20040326/003424.html

Newsletter published on 30 November 2014

Dome of the Rock - a poem by the late Edward A. Lacey, from THIRD WORLD

Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 09:11:03 +0700
Subject: Re: Jewish push to build 3rd Temple on Al Aqsa/Dome site ignites
  Religious War
From: Byron Allen Black <englishcorrection@gmail.com>

In this regard, I would like to share with you a poem by the late
Canadian writer Edward A. Lacey, from THIRD WORLD, a book of his work
that I edited posthumously:

Dome of the Rock

God was not love or law,
God was the blood I saw,
the ever-flowing blood
staining water and sod.
Irving Layton, "Orpheus"

Below, the Jews rock at their Wailing Wall:
the dark, stiff-bearded, proud Hassidic Jews;
tourist Jews in hot shirts and paper beanies;
survivors, both? Perhaps. They nod and pray
while an old Pole rains down death on Arab towns
in their name, death on Arab cities like the one
that spreads its tentacles of shop, dark alley
and hate around them here, through which they wend
to prayer, uncomprehending, as before.
Pauvre peuple maudit. From having been
prisoners of mellah and ghetto, to become
colons in their own country, which they know
will vanish like the others - Maccabees,
Hasmoneans, Herodians, Crusaders.
The Chosen People - of what mocking God?
Here above, on this mound they cannot enter,
where Solomon and Herod built their temples,
which foreigners destroyed, where the Holy of Holies
lies forever hidden, inexcavable,
rude Arab guards shout at Gentile sightseers
strolling among stiff cypresses and cedars:
No entrance here! No shoes! No immodest dress
Religion's endless litany of "no's."
There is the Golden Gate, where Jesus entered
the city on his donkey, Eternal Ass,
but you cannot approach, follow his steps;
the Arabs have blocked it up, for Jewish legend
says the Messiah will enter here, and they
want nothing of Him: they await the Mahdi.
(Although these walls are not Herodian, anyhow;
they were built by Suleiman the Magnificent,
a Turk, in the sixteenth century). That dome
of silver is El Aqsa, the Western Mosque,
westernmost point of all Muhammad's wanderings
(physical and mental ones, for he flew here).
Built by Ommayyads, made a church by Crusaders,
restored by Saladin (a Kurd),
set on fire by an Australian (or was he Jordanian?
- identities soon blur in the Middle East)
twelve years ago. A guide will show the spot
where a Palestinian gunned down King Abdallah
as he left his Friday prayers, thirty years ago.
Thirty years? Thirty centuries of hate! Below,
the Jews stick messages to God in crannies
of their Wall (all they have left), mumble and nod.
Black suits, white shawls, skull-caps. The Arab merchants,
defying Shabbat, wearing other kinds
of skull-caps, or keffiyehs, work the tourists
from those dark shops where they sprawl and smile and bargain
and hate all day, moving like snakes, to strike.
Arab women in the rich, red embroidery
of Guatemalan Indians squat, sell their wares.
The enemy? What if the enemy
is oneself? One's own self-doubt? One's masochism,
or a guilty conscience? (Didn't that concept
arise with this Chosen People, anyway?)
Down by the gate where Stephen, first Christian martyr,
was stoned to death, Arab children celebrate
Id-El-Fitr, in their new clothes, eating felaffel,
riding donkeys, mounting wooden ferris-wheels
spun by two brawny men, shrieking with delight
as the wheel rises five metres: these belong.
This is their land, their home, their festival.
No one can take it from them. The Other People
come from everywhere and nowhere. Where is here?
They have no answer, self-fulfilling prophets,
knowing what's taken must be given back,
a paranoid people, always remembering
Ahab and Naboth's vineyard and Elijah,
and the dogs shall lick the blood of Jezabel.
Approach the dome of gold now, with its blue
and green faïence tiles, given by King Hussein;
geometric lozenges, and an endless ribbon
of calligraphy proclaiming God is Great
and Beautiful and Only and Supreme.
Enter, and in the darkness you'll behold,
looming up craggily, the rock.
The peek of Mount Moriah. The first land
to emerge from primal seas, when God's hand pointed;
and it will be the last, legend says, to sink
in the final fire; that chain hanging from the dome
points down to the exact centre of the earth
(as all chains do - but let us not be quibblers).
This the mountaintop where Abraham
lured Isaac (Muslims say it was Ishmael,
and Samaritans - who still exist - insist
it's a different mountain), his best-loved son,
to sacrifice him blindly to an angry
God in a burning bush.
That God was pleased
by His servant's obedience, stayed his hand, sent an angel,
and placed a sheep conveniently nearby,
in a thicket's completely irrelevant
to the fact that blood was spilt to please a God
innocent blood was spilled on the Holy Rock
to please a primitive God that lives on blood.
Abraham, father of three religions,
all drenched in blood. In a few weeks, the Muslims
will celebrate the feast of the Sacrifice.
Already they are fattening sheep; each family
(even those living in apartment houses;
the sound of baaing fills the quiet nights)
has a pet ram now that is fed and coddled,
paraded by proud children on daily walks,
with its fat tail, pink ribbon and pink paint mark.
It thinks it's loved, and it responds with love,
quite unsuspecting that, early on the feast day
the father of the family will slit
its throat, spill its blood ritually, till it dies,
while those same children watch, grave-eyed with wonder,
then eat it, make a rug out of its skin.
The blood-soaked human race! This is the rock
whence Muhammad one night, on his poet's wings
and his Pegasus, El Burak, sprang to the seventh Heaven,
talked there with God, with prophets and with angels,
and brought his message back, of justice, mercy,
forgiveness - and blood, too. Scant miles from here,
over dry rolling hills, the other one,
the lonely one, the man on the donkey,
who tried (and failed) to send a different message,
was born. Within three days his birth was marked
by blood - the Slaughter of the Innocents.
He said "This is my body. This is my blood."
"Take ye and eat. Take ye and drink." They did.
He died in blood, and three hundred yards away
(in a dark church which five denominations
control and fight over, and which they claim
is the earth's real centre) his body lies.
(It does not lie there, naturally: "He is risen";
though Muslims say he did not even die;
another was crucified in his place; he rose
to heaven, and will return at the end of time
when Mount Moriah burns; an empty tomb
awaits him at Medina, beside the Prophet;
and many Protestants believe the body
lays in another spot, outside the walls
of this strange city.) The Dome of the Rock.
Look around now in the cool octagon
with its circling windows - clearly Byzantine,
which of course means an imitation of the Roman -
and the columns holding it up are Corinthian;
it was built originally by an Ommayyad caliph,
used also by the Crusaders - how one tires
of names, facts, history's burden! I softly pad
on red Rabat carpets given by the King
of Morocco, circle round and round the Rock
and look up
into a fantasy of red and gold
arabesques
calligraphy
stylised vegetation
and no human form,
infinite yearning for the unknown God,
Maker of all, the Beautiful, the One,
faceless and formless, pure spirit, pure good.
The children shriek with happiness at their funfair.
An old Pole rains down death on Arab towns.
Below the Jews wail at their Western Wall,
forever damned. I stare down at the Rock.
But the Rock runs red with blood!

(Author's Note: This poem should succeed in offending everybody, and I
do not feel like annotating it; it is largely self-explanatory, and its
references will be clear to anyone who knows anything about the Bible,
Christianity, Islam and/or Jerusalem. The phenomenon I refer to in the
last line is of course the afterimage that would appear on the rock if
one switched one's gaze to it after a long time spent staring at the
red-and-gold dome.)