WALL

Snarling, stinking, snapping his fore-fangs,

out of the woods, wild waste beyond woods,

comes beast, comes brute, carnivorous, ravenous,

but before him — and oh, we were saved — rose our wall.

Violent, fearsome, with invulnerable helmet and shield,

comes antagonist, foe, furious, pitiless, lethal,

axmen behind him chanting their cuneiform curse,

but before him — and, oh, saved again — loomed our wall.

So we raised ever more walls, even walls

that might fail: Jericho shucked from its ramparts,

men, women, old, young, all slaughtered.

What did it matter? We believed still in our wall.

Then the inspiration to build walls facing in!

Reservation, concentration camp, ghetto,

finally whole countries walled in, and saved were we

from traitors who’d dare wish to flee our within.

That such walls fail, too, fall, too? No matter.

Only raise more. That all walls, facing out or in,

fail, fall, leaving fossils of lives in numb rubble?

No matter. Raise more. Only raise more.