Standing in your ominous shadow I shudder.
Your invasive presence snaking into horizon
overwhelms landscape
coiling lungs of livelihood like a noose.
Earth quivers in aversion.


I struggle to define you:
Desperation Barricade?
Ethnic Cage?
Apartheid Wall?


Revulsion suppressed, I step closer.
Smooth surface screens brutal, recurring tales.
I touch your colorless grain.
Currents strike me!
Resounding wails vibrate in acoustics of pain.


Slab upon slab gargantuan mass
falls short
of quelling echoes of affliction
or containing its fire.
The heart quakes in recognition.


The land, staggering, projects a palette of bereavement:
Alizarin crimson
Palestine’s horizon since Deir Yassin.
Cadmium red
our blood and flaming corpses.
Gun-metal gray
the tarmacs bulldozed to detach towns and villages.
Sap green
our orchards razed to the ground
naked roots drying burnt sienna and umber.
Arsenic
our rivers diverted.
Titanium white
our shrouds laid gently into yellow ochre.


Hallowed the land you writhe across today
forbidden to you as Eden
transitory as the ghettoes
short-lived as Berlin!


History shall define you:
‘Mural of Shame’
an affront to Humanity
despised
condemned
knocked down.
Peddled as
graffiti-ed  f r a g m e n t s
from another
            fallen
                        kingdom.