That thou canst not stir a flower

Artwork: Wall mural by Emily Jacir, Bethlehem, 2026

Emily Jacir has just installed a hand-painted wall mural in the historic Center of Bethlehem that originally featured in the exhibition Material for a film, 2007. A Sydney Biennale (2006) installation by Jacir of a performance, also from Material for a film, is currently up at Fondazione Brescia Musei, Bethlehem's sister city.

The words featured in English, Arabic and Italian, are from a poem by British poet Francis Thompson, The Mistress of Vision (c, 1897). The lines are from the 21st stanza:

All things by immortal power,
      Near or far,
      Hiddenly
      To each other linkèd are,
      That thou canst not stir a flower
      Without troubling of a star

(source: Francis Thompson New Poems, Burns and Oates, London, third edition, 1907)