I take an oath of loyalty to the table / coated with white Formica, a cup full of pens, the ashtray / I dreamed that the State had passed out of existence / and with our children / we'd settled down in the three volumes of the / dictionary."(Shabtai, 39) Also, in Our Land he dramatically deplores the ugliness of his land. The poem is even more telling because of its many Biblical allusions. Thus, the people of God, as the Israeli used to be called are now murderers, and the land is covered in shame. In a violent, scathing image, Shabtai depicts the sky as the "broad buttocks of the murder" that has nothing of its original purity: "We quarreled / like the body parts of the man / who brought the milk of the lioness / down from the mountains / in the legend told by Bialik. / Through the cracks in the earth, / we'll look up a you then; / under your feet / our land is being harrowed / with chains of steel, / and above your heads there is no sky / like a light-blue shirt-- / but only the broad buttocks of the / murderer."(Shabtai, 78) Thus, Shabtai uses imagery that is more violent in his poetry...
Finally, Ozkan Mert speaks about poetry stating that although it is not agreeable to the politicians or government people, or even philosophers, art takes its distance from all this: "Governments and armies / dislike poetry / Holy books, prophets and laws / dislike poetry / Philosophers shrink from poetry / for poetry / will steal philosophy's bread / Virgin nuns / secretly fondle poetry..." (Mert, 15) Thus, in Mert's view poetry can speak about politics, war or death simply because "poetry loves all": "But poetry does not care: / it owes nothing to no one / it brews a storm / in the steps of history / and walks its own way / Poetry loves all..."(Mert, 15)
For the Middle Eastern poets thus, art remain a way to redeem the terrible experiences in their countries, or a means of recreating the real so as to make it graspable to our understanding and emotions.
Works Cited
Ali, Taha Muhammad. Never Mind: Twenty Poems and a Story. New York: Ibis Editions, 2000.
Mert,…
