Dream Treaties

This poem was commissioned especially for the Ha'aretz Peace Supplement that came with last weekend's paper. I found it moving, particularly as so many of our Palestinian friends here lament the shrinking interlace between Palestinian and Israeli children. As one friend, now in his 50's said: 'I had so many Israeli friends when we were growing up, and they are still my friends now. But my children - not so much.'


Dream Treaties by Ronny Someck,
translated from Hebrew by Vivian Eden

There were half-green lawns,
miserly sprinklers
and one scary moment when my daughter
vanished from view.
She was three at the time and after a search of several minutes
she grinned from ear to ear,
standing in a wagon usually used for distributing towels
and Samih al Qasim's and Mohammed Hamza Ghanayem's
children
had trundled her from one end to the other of the hall
where more than a field of thorns could have been planted
in the furrows ploughed by the adults' brows.
Afterwards the children traded roles
and the cart continued to sail like a pleasure ship
in the puddles of words choked
in two languages.
I so wanted to be a captain or a deck boy
or even just a lifebuoy
on that voyage,
and I was madly envious of the children, who had they paper and
pencil,
would in the space of 10 minutes
have signed dream treaties.



How we need these dream treaties now.