<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Stones of Jerusalem<\/strong><\/p>\n 1.<\/strong> \u2013In memoriam<\/em> Oblivious to his grandson \u2013 a gift! \u2013 my timorous brother lifted his eyes The stench of burning human flesh Persistent hunger whipped him crazy. He clenched and raised his fist towards For Your own sake,\u00a0my Lord, I take,<\/em> 2.<\/strong> My father taught me to die, And a boy and a king, alone to hone and sharpen and fling 3.<\/strong> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u2013 For George Konr\u00e1d<\/em><\/p>\n Worried, what with his women and walls and wealth, A wretched start:\u00a0There\u2019s nothing new under the sun.<\/em> How dreadful.\u00a0Still, this hour is mine, while it lasts,<\/em> 4.<\/strong> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Thomas Orsz\u00e1g-Land\u00a0<\/strong>is a poet and award-winning foreign correspondent who writes from Jerusalem and London as well as his native Budapest.\u00a0His last book was\u00a0S<\/strong>urvivors: Hungarian Jewish Poets of the Holocaust<\/a><\/em>(Smokestack\/England, 2014),\u00a0and his last E-chapbook,\u00a0Reading for Rush Hour: A Pamphlet in Praise of Passion<\/a><\/em>(Snakeskin\/England, 2016).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Stones of Jerusalem 1. Arrival\u00a0 & Departure \u2013In memoriam Gy\u00f6rgy Tim\u00e1r Oblivious to his grandson \u2013 a gift! \u2013 absorbed in a birthday book, my timorous brother lifted his eyes to the Mediterranean sky. The stench of burning human flesh eternally clung to his own. Persistent hunger whipped him crazy. The death […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[136,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2017-poetry-picks","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13154"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13157,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13154\/revisions\/13157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nArrival\u00a0 & Departure <\/strong><\/p>\n
\nGy\u00f6rgy Tim\u00e1r<\/em><\/p>\n
\nabsorbed in a birthday book,<\/p>\n
\nto the Mediterranean sky.<\/p>\n
\neternally clung to his own.<\/p>\n
\nThe death he\u2019d escaped filled his life.<\/p>\n
\na distant, friendly sky:<\/p>\n
\nI take\u2026\u00a0You do not exist.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nHeirloom<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nwhen I must, like a human being.
\nMy mother taught me to trust
\nand sing like a human being.<\/p>\n
\nwith a stone, a sling and a harp
\nhas left me the\u00a0chutzpah\u00a0to try<\/p>\n
\neach thought and word and line
\nbeyond the confines of time
\nthat bind a human being.<\/p>\n
\nA Feast in the Garden<\/strong><\/p>\n
\npoor Solomon wisely bade a scribe to describe
\nthe lofty lifting \u2013 like the sun \u2013 of depression.
\nA bestseller from the past!… well worth a review.<\/p>\n
\nThe women are fickle. The flowers bow to every wind.<\/em>
\nThe men are tyrants or servants or fools, and even<\/em>
\nI might die \u2013 outrageously under the sun.<\/em>
\n\u00a0<\/em>
\n\u2026Even the women will, and the flowers, and you.<\/em>
\nThese walls might crumble in time. We must return<\/em>
\ninto being dust or rain or hillside or thunder,<\/em>
\nwhatever our desires under the sun.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nenough to complete my poem among the flowers<\/em>
\nrejoicing in my loves and our never recurring<\/em>
\nlives as human beings under the sun.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nAt the Press Club<\/strong>
\n\u00a0<\/strong>
\nYou\u2019re here to feed your pension and tension.
\nI\u2019m chasing a soaring bird \u2013 the truth.
\nWe are not even friendly rivals.
\nI covet neither your fancy title
\nnor your impressive, official hat.
\nI am a writer. I couldn\u2019t be more
\nthan that\u2026\u00a0\u00a0though I could be, I could be, less.<\/p>\n