Jam & Jerusalem

Yvonne Green

• Publisher: Smith|Doorstop Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781912196999
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Yvonne Green's latest collection extends the urgent and compelling territory of her earlier, award-winning books. Politically engaged, many of the poems consider the human cost of war, while others deal equally intensely both with ideas and with domestic and city landscapes. A final section furthers the translations from Russian she began in 2011 with her PBS Recommended title, After Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin.

Jam And Jerusalem

A Soldier’s Scribe

This job frightens you.

You listened to him this year.

Heard mortars in his quiet voice,

Saw death in his dark eyes,

Smelled fear on his even breath,

This job frightens you because

You’ve known other soldiers

From Europe, Africa,

The Far and Middle East, Asia,

And because victims raised you.

This job shames you,

You’re his aunt,

Watch him hurt, cynical,

Afraid, frustrated, human,

He tolls like a bell hung from canons

Trapped in headstock, driven by gudgeons,

Begs for silence you can’t give him,

Or his children.

The Farhud

We walked on Shabbat

In the Bustan al-Khass

(Lettuce orchards)

On the East bank

Of The Dijla (The Tigris),

Or in al-Saa’doun, built

To look like Hyde Park.

Watch us work, prosper, plod

Tread the middle ground during

A two thousand six hundred year

Sojourn with family, food, festivals.

Listen to us speak Aramaic, Qiltu,

Then Gilit. You never learned

Our languages after you arrived,

We wrote literatures preserved

For you now in different geographies.

Watch Britain’s renegade Grand Mufti

Translate National Socialism into

His Promised-Land apartheid, listen

To the whispers that the Führer

Was born in an Egyptian village.

Watch him and hundreds of Palestinian

And Syrian intellectuals-in-exile train soldiers,

Police, militia-men and children, watch

Nothing stops the Golden Square Generals,

Even once their leaders temporal and spiritual

Run away from the British, for whose oil-fuelled

Infantry eight kilometers was further than the walk

From Ambassador Cornwallis’ dinner plate

To his card table.

Look, there’s a man in a dark suit at Maqbra,

Who’ll later press his cheek and arms up

Against a semi-cylindrical grave where

One hundred and eighty Farhud-dead are buried.

This is not the only tomb, they were not the only dead.

But go back before the Omer, watch us

Tremble as we asked “Mnein Jitem”

That Erev Pessakh after the lawyer,

Rashid al-Gaylani’s coup turned

The hilleq bitter. Watch our hopes surge

When within the month he and the Grand Mufti

Escape from the British to Iran, plummet

When Yunis al-Sab’awi declares

Himself Governor General and orders us

Penned in our homes, soar again when it’s he

Who’s deported within the day. Hear us attest

To our treble-terror reprieved when we eat

Our Tbit on the Shabbat which runs

Into Tikkun Leyl, and hear Regent

Abd al-Illah’s due back the next day,

Sunday June 1st. Watch us cheer him home

On the first day of Eid al Ziyarah.

Then watch soldiers, police, civilians attack us

On al-Khurr bridge, at al-Rusafa, Abu-Sifain

Everywhere until 3 a.m. and silence. Watch

At 6 a.m. on the second day of khag when

They start again. Not just the poor from al-Karkh

Who cross the river empty handed,

Then load-up having cruelly sacked

Our homes, shops, synagogues,

But from everywhere they yelp

“Idhbahu al-Yehud” (butcher the Jews).

Drilled by Salah al-Din as-Sabbagh,

Or by centuries of knowing our place,

Keeping the rules, paying the price

Being no guarantee of protection.

They cut up Jewish babies and threw them

Into the undertow, no Moses survived.

They raped girls and old women,

Cut their breasts, no Dina survived.

They beheaded and severed, taunted

And tore. Dragged Jews from buses

Which they used to run them over.

Every attack intended to humiliate.

The dead, hurt, stolen, destroyed

Uncountable, even once the Regent

Called in the cut that felled

The saturnine mob. Where was natural,

Civil, military, sharia law? The assumed

Duty to dhimmi?

In the stand taken by Moslems

Like Dr Sa’ib Shawkat,

Dean of Baghdad’s Medical College.

In the acts of landlords

Who risked their lives to save those

Whose houses the Hitler Youth-styled

Futuwwa had painted with red khamsas.

In the arms of neighbours

Who caught children in blankets

When they were thrown to safety

And sheltered families who jumped

Across flat roofs where Baghdad

Used to spend its summer n...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Acknowledgements
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Diplomats
• Teachers
• Courage
• Delay
• The People Of The Book
• Jam And Jerusalem
• After Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin
• Glossary
• Notes