Rupert Lupin :
PoemMy Grandfathers Dirt
The dirt… my grandfather’s dirt.
It’s not just soil. It’s him. It’s me. It’s what stays under my fingernails.
even when I wash with the last of the clean water.
Four of them.
Four pairs of eyes looking at me, asking where the bread is.
They think I am a magician.
I am just a man holding a dead olive branch.
The sky is buzzing again.
Another bird of steel, circling.
My littlest one, Layla, she doesn’t cry anymore when it screams.
She just goes quiet. Like a stone.
That scares me more.
It makes me want to scream at the sky until it cracks open and rains mercy.
But the sky is empty.
Just blue and heat and that buzzing.
My father built the stone wall.
I rebuilt it after '14.
And after '21.
And now…
It is rubble again.
Why do they hate the stones?
The stones are just bones of the earth.
My sons ask, "Baba, can we plant the seeds today?"
And I tell them yes.
Because what else is there?
If I stop planting, I'm already dead — the bomb doesn't even need to bother.
We plant in dust. We pray to a dry God.
I remember my grandfather’s hands.
Huge, like shovels.
He grew oranges. Sweet as honey.
My hands are shaking now.
I can’t even hold a hoe without thinking—
is this the spot?
will the metal come here?
I hate this. I hate that I have to be a soldier just to be a farmer.
I hate the world that writes papers while my children eat dirt soup.
Do they know?
Do they care that the olives are burning?
Four children.
Four names.
I say them like prayers.
I count them at night.
Sometimes I wake up and count them again.
I don’t know if the sun will come up tomorrow,
or if it will just be another shadow
falling over the rows of my ancestors.
My wife… she doesn’t speak much.
She just keeps patching the clothes.
Patch, patch, patch.
Life is just patching holes in a sinking boat.
I want to leave.
No. I want to stay.
This is my earth.
This is the only place where I understand what the wind is saying — even when it's telling me to run.
If I leave, the wind won’t know me.
If I stay, the wind might kill me.
Bitter.
Everything tastes bitter.
The tea, the bread, the air.
Maybe it is the dust.
Maybe t
2026-09-26 19:20:24