Peter Dale Scott
from:
MOSAIC OF ORPHEUS: Five Canadian Poems
HOLY LAND I: Truth
“He who sees a need and waits to be asked for help is as unkind as if he had refused it.”
--- Dante
“Hell is realizing that one did not help when one could have.”
--- James Mawdsley
I have come to this Holy Land
of limestone and olive trees
with signposts to Armageddon Megiddo
where every salutation --
Shalom! Salaam! -- is Peace!
but talk is of we and they
I listen and am obsessed
by how much I dare not say
The young settler on the escarpment
looking down on the Dead Sea
spoke of the vineyard they had planted
and how much she loved the land
Pointing down to the Arab villages
she said one was OK
the other not so good
Who will pick your grapes? I asked
and was mute when she said she would
The Tao that can be expressed
is not the true Tao…. Tao Te Ching 1
Can this excuse or explain
my reluctance throughout my life
to meet hate with lovingkindness?
Like those many times in Berkeley
when N boasted of his practice
at the Lake Chabot rifle range
with Black Panthers on his left
John Birchers on his right
all aware they were getting ready
for the day they would shoot each other
What did I ever say?
What was there for me to say?
Useless to give that settler
Auden’s anguished dilemma
We must love one another or die
but perhaps I could have appealed
to the faith she was living by
the truth laid out in Torah
if not Thou shalt love thy neighbor Leviticus 19:18
at least do not oppress
the stranger among you
since you were strangers too Leviticus 19:33-34
Our West Coast faiths are mellowed
remote from the hate and blood
exhausted years before
by decades of Holy War
Josephus lays out clearly
how through murder and treason
Jewish Zealots defiled this Mount
till the Romans burned the city Jewish War IV.286-388, VI.401-VII.1
For hate to be satisfied
will it be necessary
to endure all this again?
Just as Aeneas’s escape
from the walls of burning Troy
is said to have helped refine
his archaic piety
into that of a new city
imposing peace with law Aeneid VI.852
for the haughty to be brought low Isaiah 2:17, Aeneid VI.853
so Rabbi Yochanan escaped Yochanan ben Zakkai
Jerusalem’s holocaust Talmud Gittin:56b
and developed prayer and study Mishnah
to replace the burnt-out temple
of animal sacrifice.
This has been the way of the world
refinement by conflagration
Is there not some other way?
The neglected masses
of Christendom and Islam
from the hillfolk of America
to the hillfolk of Lebanon
confounded by the forces
of merciless intellect
retreat into the solaces
of simplifying sect
And as empires spread again
so Zealots too return
Something hovers over this poem
nudging me to affirm
I have glimpsed the right path
where our lives are not deformed
which is why I feel such pain
that I did not express
what Dante had envisioned --
with Empire and church collapsed
in fearful apocalypse Purgatorio 32:121-160
Popes and Emperor in Hell
from selfishness and greed -- Inf. 10:119, 11: 8, 19:44-118
as a sweet new
different society
with the force of a gentle heart cor gentil
able to change the world
I was able to share with my class
No time to grieve for roses
when the forests are burning Slowacki
here in this Holy Land
of Katyushas and M-16s
with the dollar in steep decline
from the war our mellowed movement
was powerless to stop
my memory now half gone
I must look to a stronger voice
with more settled conviction
to narrow the jagged gap
between the truth we are born into
and the truth that has always been
(for in these things I delight, saith the Lord) Jeremiah 9:24
in lovingkindness
Jerusalem 11/13/07
