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Philip Holmes

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masada

i     the zealots, a. d. 73

      Three years, watching the work take shape
      below their walls, the slow mass of siege
      and its human apparatus. Punctually, the light
      rose and set beyond the Roman camp, beyond
      the borders of the world.    They endured,
      spared water, knowing that they were all
      of the resistance.   And at the end did not
      surrender, but killed each other and the last
      himself, families lying down together
      in the huddled order of death.  It was said 
      they numbered more than nine hundred.
      The Romans entered in silence.
      Shards have been found, with which 
      the lots were drawn.


ii     1970

      Rock; and for the rest, the springs
      lost into the air and bitter sea:
      a land stopped in the motions of its
      making, fissured yellow or bleached
     
      under the returning moon. The ruins bear
      mute witness, huddled on the parched stone,
      where Herod made a garden in the wilderness.
      Trilingual signs explain the uses
      
      of broken halls and pools, terraces;
      but everything is covered by the blown sand:
      the cisterns hold only odd, dried turds
      and the bones of small animals; each thing

      heavy with what happened here. The sun 
      breaks out of Moab, lighting the hills,
      the Roman camp, the rock. Level by level
      night gives up their histories.

Page(s) 91-92

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