<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><p class="">The Border<br class=""><br class="">the soil is shifting in the dirt cemeteries of Ramallah<br class="">the stones are lifting in the rock cemeteries of Tel Aviv<br class="">from every corner of the land<br class="">coffins and winding sheets take flight <br class="">the bodies of the violently dead<br class="">arise<br class="">drawing fire from sentries<br class="">who cease, stunned<br class="">when they see their targets<br class="">no more dead for being twice or three times murdered<br class=""><br class="">settlers and soldiers and students<br class="">mothers, children, patriarchs<br class="">common citizens of the country of the dead<br class="">draw into formations, head unerringly to the green lines<br class="">the checkpoints, the walls, the razor wire fences<br class="">that separate the residents of the still living halves of the promised land<br class=""><br class="">the corpses<br class="">orient themselves by magnetism<br class="">burned toe to crushed skull<br class="">an unbroken necklace of cadavers<br class="">across city boulevards, through village squares<br class="">beside creek beds and along olive orchards<br class="">alternating corpses of Arab and Jew <br class="">sometimes on the very dotted line<br class="">penciled in by diplomats<br class="">sometimes surrounding a settlement<br class="">though more often the settlements are <br class="">lifted by a flight of corpses and set down<br class="">somewhere more appropriate<br class=""><br class="">the slim but continuous barricade of bodies<br class="">is discovered by the twin populations<br class="">who regard one another across it<br class="">with no reduction of enmity<br class="">but in each assembly <br class=""></p><p class="">there is at least one<br class="">who can translate the message written by the unblinking dead<br class=""><i class=""> we have purchased the right to negotiate that which you could not</i><i class=""><br class=""></i><i class=""> we are the border you shall not pass</i></p><p class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Bob Engel</p></div></body></html>