Because new-green grass sprouts by the roadside,
and maples dangle chartreuse catkins,
blue-green columbine, and grey-green lupine leaves,
wildflowers rising in a ditch.
Because sunbeams blast through birches,
serrated leaves green as emeralds.
On the bend evergreens’ soft new needles,
a flush of pale tips.
Valley freshened by overnight rain.
The land renews, glistens, welcomes warmth
and damp, longer days, mild nights,
a green land resilient, burgeoning.
Robins and crows carry straw,
sheep feed their young. In the fields,
goats roam and bounce,
a herd of black and white cows
ruminates with calm dedication.
A woman digs her garden,
a child stirs a puddle. All this.
Oh, God. Goats. Those black Palestinian goats.
War in Gaza. On the news, Palestine’s flag
with its green stripe for fertile Arab lands,
families on the run carrying bundles and babies.
So easy to see only our west coast haven.
So comfortable in this lush land,
until the goats trigger Palestine—
that barren wasted world.
In a news clip, two goats climb the rubble.
Young boys sit in front, bandaged, begging,
one missing a leg, one waving a small flag.
Anne Hopkinson is the former president of Planet Earth Poetry, a thirty-year reading series in Victoria. She writes of her time in Algeria, Rwanda, and the Dominican Republic, and her love of nature and human nature.
Questions and Answers
How did your writing process unfold around this poem? How did you write, edit, and refine it?
I had a clear image in mind: driving through the Cowichan Valley in spring, and listening to the radio news about the war in Gaza. A few days later, I began this poem with a free write, a loose rambling deluge of words on the page. Pages. I wrote everything I felt about the war, so of course it was far too much for one poem. Alex Leslie, Vancouver poet, once did a workshop on shrinking your writing. Shrinking by cutting, and by sifting.
The process of sifting, is to find phrases worthy of keeping. In Betsy Warland’s book, Breathing the Page, on page 119, she describes an exercise that explains how to identify a word or phrase that embodies the core of the poem. I came up with green and goats. Then I could sift with those two words in mind.
The more I revised, the more I took out, the more I realized I wanted an abundance of green, the fresh damp west coast valley full of growth and life in comparison to Gaza. I had a surplus of lines about goats: the political history of goats in the Middle East. How Israel made it illegal for Palestinians to raise goats, expelling herders and farmers to build settlements. Those lines would be an info-drop, would not add to the theme of my guilty awakening, or the contrast of the two landscapes and living conditions. Edited them out.
Green led me to the Palestinian flag, the stripe that signifies fertile Arab land.
Goats led me to the two boys. They may not be herders, but they are survivors. As are goats; hardy creatures that eat anything and live in marginal terrain.
I realized I had to have people in the poem—peace, and the lack of it, must be applied to humans, the human condition. Triggered by the goats, and the realization that I had forgotten the Palestinian people in the beauty of our countryside, led me to the final image of the two boys.
What did you find particularly challenging in writing this poem?
I found it challenging to restrain my emotions. The poem could have become a rant, or a tirade against Israeli bombing, or against Hamas. I kept focus on the valley and the people of Gaza. And it had to be about me, my sudden insight/awareness, because I can’t appropriate a voice from Israel or Palestine even though I have deep feelings on the conflict.
Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory; don’t expound your feelings in descriptive words. Give the reader credit for feeling the unsaid message, the subtext. I wrote “All this.” and “Oh. God. The goats.” to express my feelings.