The “Only Democracy” (in the Middle East)

Rami Saari


This won’t be a political poem, brothers,
I’m too fed up
with Cowboys and Indians,
and Cops and Robbers.
Are these really the young men
who were supposed to play before us,
stroking Palestinian forces with mortar fire?
And my darling son, with a club and rubber bullets?

What can I say? The movie is fascinating
even if most of us have minor parts;
we still hope
to win, like men, a big win:
eating, gorging, consuming everything
like live fire, like man in God’s image,
like idolaters ardently worshipping
a biblical whore, a temple prostitute, a furrow of earth, a city of fools;
the Wild West
settles in ancestral graves
here in the east.






Translated from Hebrew by Lisa Katz

The drunken Boat
GREEK POETRY translated by Saari to Hebrew
GREEK PROSE translated by Saari to Hebrew
Rami Saari’s page

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