Tikkun Magazine, May/June 2008

The Spoils 

by Chana Bloch

The mother of Sisera looked out at a window, and cried through the lattice.

—Judges 5:28

 
An Israeli soldier, just back from the front,
gave me a photo he found of a mother and son,
a talisman the enemy wore to battle
in his khaki shirt pocket.

 
I was too giddy to ask
what he thought he was offering me that day
forty years ago
—a trophy? a souvenir?
All he wanted, he said, was to get home safe.

His mother fought the war
by candlelight in a Jerusalem shelter,
stood up, sat down,
slumped to the mattress:
Why is his chariot so long in coming?
Why tarry his nine hundred chariots of iron?
Surely the victors are dividing the spoils,
To each man a damsel, a damsel or two—

Home safe, the soldier let me take
a shot of him holding his dazed mother,
a shot of him cradling his gun.
Then, with the pomp of a conquering hero,
he gave me the photo he found on the battlefield

and I was pleased
to take that relic from his hand
two days after a war he still likes
to think we won.

Source Citation

Bloch, Chana. 2008. The spoils. Tikkun. 23(3):39.