Opinion Editorials, March 2004, www.aljazeerah.info
Human Price of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people
Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
Cities, localities, and tourist attractions
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The Holy City
By Catherine Stuart
March 6, 2004
I’ve had all kinds of crusades
I thought I had to protect and maintain you
Like the holy city
If I could just shore up the walls
Stop them from crumbling
Preserve against decay
My city of dreams
The promised land
Then all would be at peace
Treasure the relics, keep them precious and waiting for the return of the king, when all might and potency shall be revealed
I was one of the elect, one of the chosen
I had seen the face of God
It seemed like predetermination
I could see my path to the Holy City
Rising into the air, the path of pure gold, like clear glass
But like Easter, 1916, all’s changed, changed utterly; a terrible
beauty is born
The terrible beauty of the martyr
The delicate flowering of the bomb
The bliss of certainty, the beatitude of righteousness
The walls of jasper, chalcedony, and sardonyx have been shattered;
The gates of pearl spattered with blood
The shining towers, the white arms reaching to God
Broken and bandaged
Bleeding stumps
“Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart…
And what if excess of love bewildered them till they died?...
Was it needless death after all?...
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead”
Catherine Stuart is a poet from Sydney, Australia. She wrote this poem at the end of 2001, entitled "The Holy City". I wrote it both in response to September 11, 2001, and the current intifada against the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
The last few lines are from a poem by William Butler Yeates called "Easter, 1916", about an Irish republican uprising against British rule in Dublin. It was suppressed after a few days and the leaders were shot. Oppression continues to touch all our lives and unite us all in the struggle for justice.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python. (Alquds,10/25/03). |
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