WALLS AND BORDERS

Walls
“American didn’t bring democracy. It brought walls.” Yousif al-Timimi in National Geographic July 2011


There’s something in man, uh human
‘That loves a wall’…
Jerusalem
China
Istanbul
Hadrian
Mellah
Venice
Pale
Richmond…well,
An upside-down
Walled trench;

Speaking of
‘Somme’
Others…
Warsaw
Berlin
Panmunjom
Ben Hai…a river wall,
Selma
BelfastKashmir
Baghdad
Gaza
Yuma…ah finally a rime,

Aleppo,
El Pas--
‘Add’ nauseam
And
Two kinds of mortars
Bricks ‘unmortified’

Mortgaging tomorrow for yesterday;
Good ‘fencing’, uh yes, ‘know’…


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

*First published in The New Verse News
in different form
*Robert Frost