Photo: Smadar Halperin-Epshtein
How many did these laboriously
Hewed walls
Close in on
As they trudged endlessly
With buckets laden
And arms weighted
Up and down
And up and down again
For more?
How many did they shelter
Under siege
Of catapults and
Rusted arrows
As the walls shuddered
Dust
Onto the bitten lips
And rounded shoulders
Of those crouched below?
How many hastened feet
Did these walls keep secrets for
Under the cover of
Night
And sentries’ snores
As lovers met
In darkened corners
To remember
Life before?
For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Wall
Na'ama Yehuda 
This is absolutely fabulous, Na’ama… Loved it.
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Thank you, Dale! These sort of places always make me wonder of all the people who’d lived and visited and were sheltered and indentured and suffered and loved and laughed and dreamed within them. There is so much TIME etched into such walls and so much LIFE and oh-so-many words they’d heard!
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Absolutely! And your words covered all that 😉
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Yep. Me wordy birdy! 🙂
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A chirpy wordy birdy!
🦜🐦😘
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LOL! Not so chirpy these last few days (had a cold and my ears felt swimmy …) but wordy birdy nonetheless and chirpier today! 😉
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Loved the questions you raise with your poem. Were you thinking of a particular place? It puts me in mind of the underground chambers in Cappadocia
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These questions come up for me in almost any place of any age … for there is so much life that was lived there before I’d seen them … and much that wasn’t told, for the stories we hear of history are very selectively those of these who’d had the education and power and permission to record them. Castles, especially, because stone walls ‘keep’ (in more way than one, I suppose), speak to me that way, but not only castles or underground chambers. Lighthouses, too, old ruins, empty hulls of cathedrals, old homes, remnants of cabins, stone-lined roads. There is a lot of history in all of them, and it intrigues me. 🙂
Great comment, Crispina! Thank you!
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And a great reply. 🙂
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🙂
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I have a photo of the same or at least a very similar place. It is from the steps to the dungeons at castle Cahir Ireland. Your poem sums up the thoughts I had when I was there. It’s a creepy place.
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I believe it is so though I have to ask my niece exactly where she took it — she was taking photos all over Europe and visited a good share of creepy castles … 😉 I think this was in Germany/Austria but I might be mistaken.
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How interesting. Maybe there is something universal about the idea of dungeon!
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I believe there is. You look at the indigenous cultures that often held sacred services underground, ‘sacrificed’ to the underground deities by burying people alive in the dark, and had at the same time used underground spaces to store food and water and to hide in emergencies. I think the fascination with protection (in and from) the underground and the helplessness implied in being LEFT there or LOCKED there is something quite primal.
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This is an interesting point of view. Being underground makes me very uncomfortable but I can see how sometimes it could feel protective.
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Yes, I think it’s often a matter of association and experience, and perhaps, personality. A friend of mine grew up in “Tornado Alley” in the US and she remembers feeling snug as a bug in a rug whenever she was in the basement of her grandparents house. It’s a story I may put into one of the little writing pieces, perhaps. But … just to illustrate that for some it might feel safe, while for others it may hold connotations of entrapment and lack of light and so on. I certainly personally prefer the open air and being above ground (though I’ve rented basement apartments in the past, when it was what I could afford – and it was a shelter and a home-for-a-time, if not my preference …). 🙂
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Luckily I’ve never lived in a basement. They aren’t so common over here in Australia. I guess some people feel safe underground but for me – no way! 🙂
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The basement I lived in wasn’t TOTALLY underground (I’d have trouble with that, I think) but had windows that were set near the ground on the outside of the house, but high on the walls of the basement. I could look out and see grass and people’s feet and “a piece of sky” that always reminded me of Streisand’s song in Yentel … 😉
It was a necessity at the time, financially it was what I could afford, and there was the added safety of the families that owned (and lived in) the house above and rented the ‘finished basement’ …. But, it was hardly my preferred way to live.
I felt happy to have a roof over my head in a relatively safe area and in a price I could (just about) afford, but I can’t say the almost-underground aspect of it was comforting in of itself … It was more about just dealing with it.
And fortunately in both cases the families that rented the homes and essentially shared the space above my head were nice families.
Not really missing it, though … 😉
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There are tenement houses like that in inner city Melbourne but I have never lived in one. I used to walk past a row of them on my home and wonder what it would be like to live in one. They look romantic in movies 🙂
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The houses I lived in were a bit outside the City proper and so were average-family detached (or semi-detached) homes, and less romantic … 😉 But their basement levels were probably similar in some way or the other to the buildings I’d rented a basement ‘apartment’ in.
That said, yes, the “Brown Stones” that we have in NYC (and there are such in other metropolitan areas) are romantic in many ways. Sometimes they are lovely inside. Sometimes they are not so lovely.
Like people? 😉
🙂
Na’ama
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Very impressive carving into rock. Thought provoking words. Nice.
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Thank you, Anita! 🙂
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