up close

straight ahead

point out that

tell you everything

it’s fear

hanging over their heads

our machine

defrauded us

we’d been expecting

to keep them

something struck me like lightening

quietly submitted to it

those silenced

yet pronounced

first it rattled

different from other times

in sudden panic or alarm they had fallen

winding lane

pure heroics

permission to show

a thousand cries

affirms that human love is

when silence had closed in

the very image of God’s form

and so forth

in silent obedience

voices

This piece (including the title) is composed out of phrases taken randomly from “Khirbet Khizeh”, a 1949 novella, written by S. Yizhar and translated by Nicholas de Lange and Yaacob Dweck (2008). In 2009, I bought this book from Judd Books (one of my favorite London bookshops) and I am only now sitting down to read it properly. It is beautifully written prose on a rather heavy topic.