An Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zion / and on the opposite hill I am searching for my little boy. / An Arab shepherd and a Jewish father / both in their temporary failure. / Our two voices met above / the Sultan’s Pool in the valley between us. / Neither of us wants the boy or the goat / to get caught in the wheels / of the “Chad Gadya” machine. / Afterward we found them among the bushes, / and our voices came back inside us / laughing and crying. / Searching for a goat or for a child has always been / the beginning of a new religion in these mountains.

The whole text has cultural references. Mount Zion, by its use and historical significance, the "sultan's swimming pool", being a specific reference of an Arab culture and the Chad Gaya, for being a musical style. The Arab shepherd, however, enters more into the perspective of common sense, and could be seen, from an alternative perspective, as an emptiness of cultural meaning.

<span>a. the Arab shepherd
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2 years ago