Dahlia Ravikovitch, “The Fruit of the Land”

Palestinian artist Wafa Hourani imagines the refugee camp as a thriving neighborhood (an exhibition, “Here and Elsewhere” from a column in the New Yorker)

Dear friends and readers

Nine years ago Dahlia Ravikovitch died, on 21 August 2005: this poem of hers could not be more timely today — generally, not just for Gaza where it is apparent the Israeli gov’t will not lift the blockade, will not allow a Palestinian state to exist alongside Israel. It’s timely for Ferguson where the murder of a young black teenager has still not resulted in the arrest of the man who killed him, and there has been a week of nights of military occupation (see the history of the militarization of US police forces around the country; and mass incarceration by Israel and the US); — and for all the other places where people try to live lives under the bombs or in despite of unjust prison and criminal justice systems, a capitalist-run economy which refuses through an equitable tax system to provide people with good jobs, education and a hopeful future, and uses internet surveillance by those who have the power to punish.

The Fruit of the Land

You asked if we’ve got enough cannons.
They laughed and said: More than enough
and we’ve got new improved antitank missiles
and bunker busters to penetrate
double-slab reinforced concrete
and we’ve got crates of napalm and crates of explosives,
unlimited quantities, cornucopias,
a feast for the soul, like some finely seasoned delicacy
and above all, that secret weapon,
the one we don’t talk about.
Calm down, man,
the intel officer and the CO
and the border police chief
who’s also a colonel in that hush-hush commando unit
are all primed for the order: Go!
and everything’s shined up like the skin of a snake
and we’ve got chocolate wafers on every base
and grape juice and Tempo soda
and that’s why we won’t give in to terror
we will not fold in the face of violence
we’ll never fold no matter what
‘cause our billy clubs are nice and hard.
God, who has chosen us from all the nations,
comforteth with apples
the fighting arm of the IDF
and the iron boxes and the crates of fresh explosives
and we’ve got cluster bombs too,
though of course that’s off the record.
Serve us bourekas and cake, O woman of the house,
for we were slaves in the land of Egypt
but never again,
and blot out the remembrance of Amalek
if you track him down,
and if you seek him without success
Blessed be the tiny match
that a soldier in some crack unit will suddenly strike
and set off the whole bloody mess.

— translated by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld, from Hovering at a Low Altitude: The collected poetry of Dahlia Ravikovitch (NY: Norton, 20009).

From Bloch and Kronfeld’s notes: “The Fruit of the Land” (Hebrew, zimrat ha-arets), zimra means singing; in biblical Hebrew it can also mean “produce, bounty”. Block and Kronfield capture the macho voice of the defense types we constantly hear in the media rhapsodizing about Israel’s superior firepower. But nowadays they wouldn’t acknowledge they have “more than enough” and would have answered the opening question – ” You asked if we’ve got enough cannons” – with a demand for more funds for the military. There is much allusion to the Bible.

Central to the poem is the reality that things do not have to be this way. Armaments ever worse do not have to be the fruit of the earth. It’s an important idea not to let go off: things all around us do not have to be this way. Go back to More’s Utopia for one of the earliest statements of this principle.

Sylvia