Perhaps this is flogging a dead horse, after all their are new article to read and comment on, but I remembered this poem, and I post it in response to “The City of Slaughter”
Shortly after the Six Day War the great Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges wrote this poem.
A man imprisoned and cast into a spell.
a man condemned to be the snake
who keeps watch over infamous gold,
a man condemned to be Shylock
a man bent over the earth in hard work
knowing that once he stood in Eden.
an old man with his eyes put out who will bring down
the pillars of the house.
a face condemned to wear a mask.
a man who in spite of men
is Spinoza and the Baal Shem and the cabalists.
a man who is the Book.
a tongue that praises from the depths
the justice of the skies.
a salesman or dentist
who spoke with God on the mountaintop.
a man condemned to be the object of ridicule.
the abomination, the Jew.
a man stoned, set afire.
asphyxiated in death chambers.
a man who endures and is deathless
and who now has returned to his battle.
to the violent light of victory
handsome as a lion in the twelve o’clock sun.
