Wandering in nature
under the cold rain
With only a thin shirt on his back
He knew the local names of every miniature plant
he pointed out: "That's medicine"
"That's poison"
His nose was pink and his laughter was defiant
"We are tough, Habibi!"
And yes, I was sure that we are the mountains
and the caves we once inhabited
The ruins of palaces we once built
The cities we conquered
The blood of empires
We toppled
We are the world, at a glance
And yes, we are a made-up nation
A nation made up of a thousand other nations
that is hard to trace back its exact origin
But no, we are not a false nation
We are both Goliath and David in unison
The effete heart in face of beauty
We are the Ancient Peoples of the Sea,
The lost tribe in the desert,
We are the Hebrew alphabets we once used to write
the Palestinian Aramaic we once spoke,
The distinct Levantine dialect we currently use,
The fresh waters of the Jordan,
We are the entire history of Gentiles and Jews,
the one we are told is no longer ours
We are the entire population of Jesus
We are his disciples and his complacent in treason
We are a solitary olive tree we call "Roman"
yet we are not sure when we planted it
We are the carob-colored hair, the red beard,
the sun-kissed skin
We are the Romans who roamed the same streets
since the dawn of inscribed history
We are the Philistine language we lost
the Hebrew language we despise
Yet fondly listen to its lyrics
We use the same old slingshot and the small rock
that has probably been used for the same purpose
(to shoot)
Since the time we cursed ourselves in our own bible
The whistles we still communicate by
and call it "the language of the birds"
We are the Arabs who came in
thirsty and tired, who thought our
Jerusalem apples
were a piece of heaven,
and we thought their heaven
was the one we have preached about forever
We are an ancient lone Greek monastery
A sycamore fig tree we brought back from Egypt
A cumin seed that flavors our meals
A Muslim allegiance
A communist intellectual we expropriated from our homes
The tender hand of a street-vender
A Canaanite deity we never met
Yet still, we call our villages by its name
A fig tree we planted
ten thousand years ago
but we ended up uprooting it when
It desecrated the sanctity of the sun
Over our limestone-paved porch
With its leafy branches
It tumbled like a giant,
But Goliath never fell
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