Poem - In Socrates' Defence

In Socrates’ Defense

I remember my face pressed up against the hot chain link fence,

my fingers wrapped around and through the wires.

My small feet pegged into the diamond shapes,

clinging like a Gecko,

sunning his cold blood.

I remember wanting to play European football

with the boys on the other side of the fence.

Sometimes the ball hit the fence near me,

I rocked back and forth, and they would look at me.

Embarrassed, I’d lower my gaze and smile at the dusty ground.

They called out to me.

I didn’t know their language, but I knew what they meant.

They were asking for my name, and if I could play football.

I nodded affirmation because they talked so kindly.

I could not believe the stories I was told about them.

I remember the aroma of the soldiers’ cigarette smoke,

as they walked along the other side of the fence.

Sometimes they kicked the ball back to the boys.

I thought they must have liked football too.

Sometimes a soldier would give me a sesame cracker through the fence.

I remember when the games ended, coming down.

My fingers and hands held the fence lines for hours.

I would jump down and make a dust plume, on my side of the fence.

I climbed up and over those huge jagged rocks that went up a little hill.

At the top, I would gaze back down at the emerald color of the boys’ field.

My father died a soldier’s death.

They told me the people on the other side of the fence had done it.

I could not believe it, at the time.

My mother sent me with my uncle to America.

I was to play football on emerald grass.

Had I stayed, they would have made me a soldier like my father.

I remember feeling terribly guilty, and hollow.

My extended family was a partisan jury, staring at me.

My bad dreams are plagued by them; my good, those boys.

In those dreams the fence is gone, and I give and take passes.


by Bateman-Ezra
Copyright 2010