an original poem written in response to the Poet to Poet Translation project

Out of Jerusalem,
to Jericho and the Dead Sea, calm,
on one side, a Bedouin
grazing encampment, a camel
face down on the side of the low highway,
feral goats, all fled from their own
villages not on the map of the south;

on the other side, a hill,
scorched - it hasn’t always been
like that, surely? –
and, as all the vehicles go by
and the dust settles again,
two roads going nowhere, hard-core, both
just a stone’s throw away.