Two Archaeological Poems

by Norman Simms (March 2018)

Mosaic floor in the Khirbet Susiya, 4th Century (credit)

An Old Synagogue Mosaic in Susiya

have sat here many centuries, under the blazing sun,

once my roof collapsed, and then the sand

covered these wonderful mosaics, lovely colours,

images of piety and pleasure, such as one

might see in a far off rich and goyish land,

but eventually as they say, eventually time blurs

everything, and no one saw me anymore.

Then other settlers, not really very long ago

crossed over the river and built a village, used my name;

they never noticed me sitting here in the middle,

always waiting for the time to pass again,

and my own descendants to return and brush

aside the dust of centuries, until now, that is,

without the poetry of dreams or the piddle

of politics. I watch the scientists rush

to poke and measure what lay beneath the surface,

and while they don’t exactly appreciate my faith

inscribed in pagan illustrations, they

are my own people, finally, and claim

me as their own, while the others fiddle

with the law and turn time upside down

as though they were here first like the sand and dust,

eternal and natural, like the wind and the dervish swirl

of made-up history, violent and ephemeral

in ugly tents and vicious lies. 

How I would hurl

invectives at these enemies and cast them down

in all their arrogance, but I am old and know a thing or two,

that what was not there ten years ago cannot now be true

and must learn patience yet again and bite my tongue,

though I could not have done that when I was young;

the poetry you see in these mosaics came from anger—

how fierce I was in the faith I had in God!

Now like the sands that slowly yield my face,

I sit here at the side and wait for your response.

Excavation of Philistine grave in Ashkelon National Park (credit)

A Philistine Cemetery Discovered in Ashkelon

knew one day they would find me here in Ashkelon,

Where I was buried almost three thousand years ago,

And I am not ashamed to be seen here, now in my bones,

All other features missing with the passing time, and so

Let them say what they will about my people, Philistines,

That we were not all what they thought when they used

Our name to mock and scorn a nation without art or sense

Of beauty; we weren’t brutes devoid of culture,

And we had no dark propensity to evil crafts.

Nor was it even our fault that others came and found us foreign.

There had been a promise and they believed, but none

Of this was known to us when they swept in out of the South

And attacked our cities and our temples. In truth,

We could have fought together against the real enemies,

If only we both had the patience to listen to the wind.

But history already had decided otherwise, the earth

Could not be shared, no more than the voices that arose

Out of the depths in the places where we both lay down to dream.

If only I could express myself in such a way

That both our ancestors could hear, or our descendants,

I would feel my death and silence over centuries

Had not been in vain. Nebuchadnezzar gave false

Prophecies, established wrongful boundaries,

And finally covered over all our arts and wishes.

If necessary, I can wait another three thousand years,

Now that my silence has been recognized, my bones exposed,

For that is the meaning of memory, images on screen.

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Norman Simms taught in New Zealand for more than forty years at the University of Waikato, with stints at the Nouvelle Sorbonne in Paris and Ben-Gurion University in Israel. He founded the interdisciplinary journal Mentalities/Mentalités in the early 1970s and saw it through nearly thirty years. Since retirement, he has published three books on Alfred and Lucie Dreyfus and a two-volume study of Jewish intellectuals and artists in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Western Europe, Jews in an Illusion of Paradise; Dust and Ashes, Comedians and Catastrophes, Volume I, and his newest book, Jews in an Illusion of Paradise: Dust and Ashes, Falling Out of Place and Into History, Volume II. Several further manuscripts in the same vein are currently being completed. Along with Nancy Hartvelt Kobrin, he is preparing a psychohistorical examination of why children terrorists kill other children.

More by Norman Simms here.

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