Day 176

I am thinking now about stones, how they lie
on top of the soil or within it, smooth
or jagged, how sometimes they are the size
of your hand and you can hold one, lend the warmth
of your body to the stone until it is filled
with it, until it feels as though it were warm
from its own core. How I offered a stone
like that to a friend once who was grieving some loss.
How she held it, closed her fingers around it.
I am thinking of a boy who had a small stone
he bent to pick up walking home from school
on a day there was still school, still time, still
other boys walking beside him. Still a house
to return to, a mother sitting in a living room
talking with friends, a sister who was small
playing on the floor with a pot, putting on
a lid and taking it off. On and off, making
that sound behind the sound
of voices in conversation.
How he put the small stone in his pocket
and, later, forgot it was there; remembered it
only weeks later when he reached in the pocket
hoping it might be some scrap of food, touched it,
looked at it. Unchanged
when everything else had changed.

Day 175

A boy lies in a makeshift hospital bed on the floor
of the corridor, next to his sister.  She is burned
so badly he doesn’t know her, keeps saying her name, 
asking whoever passes by where she is.  The doctors
and nurses don’t say that’s her, don’t tell him
everyone else in his family is gone.  He is wounded
but he may survive; it’s not, anyway, these wounds
he’ll die from.  When Ciel was seven I worked with a boy
the same age from Gaza who had come to be fitted
with a prosthetic leg.  Seventeen members of his family
killed in a single bombing: his mother, his grandmother,
his infant sister. He laid all the human figures from my shelves
on the floor, each by each, sat looking at them
a long time,  then covered them
with one of my shawls.  There were no words
between us; we needed no words.  Later I took Ciel
to Stoneface park, watched her climb the tall jagged rock:
her foothold sure, hands reaching level after level.
I thought of the boy stumbling on his metal leg.
I thought of his grandmother among the small covered dolls.
I drew the shawl around my shoulders, against the chill wind.

Day 174

A boy lies in a makeshift hospital bed on the floor
of the corridor, next to his sister.  She is burned
so badly he doesn’t know her, keeps saying her name, 
asking whoever passes by where she is.  The doctors
and nurses don’t say that’s her, don’t tell him
everyone else in his family is gone.  He is wounded
but he may survive; it’s not, anyway, these wounds
he’ll die from.  When Ciel was seven I worked with a boy
the same age from Gaza who had come to be fitted
with a prosthetic leg.  Seventeen members of his family
killed in a single bombing: his mother, his grandmother,
his infant sister. He laid all the human figures from my shelves
on the floor, each by each, sat looking at them
a long time,  then covered them
with one of my shawls.  There were no words
between us; we needed no words.  Later I took Ciel
to Stoneface park, watched her climb the tall jagged rock:
her foothold sure, hands reaching level after level.
I thought of the boy stumbling on his metal leg.
I thought of his grandmother among the small covered dolls.
I drew the shawl around my shoulders, against the chill wind.

Day 173

Now we are all Refaat   I cannot claim this, 
do not belong to this
A friend tells me the story of his grandparents:
how they fled the Nazis, 
landed in Cuba, then New York
then, finally, rural New Jersey
on a chicken farm  In a dream
I am on a boat that is nowhere, headed to nowhere
Drifting in the middle of a sea with nothing to orient by
Not even a compass  not even the constellations
Someone asks when did you start to write poetry
Someone asks can poetry save anything
Someone says I went to the protests but I failed
to stop the bombing   I think of Refaat
telling stories to his daughter, and she
telling him hers   Refaat    saying she never before
liked to read, but now I think
if she lives she might grow up to be a storyteller
I am italicizing everything I don’t belong to
Is the child alive?  How she must miss her father
My friend tells me what his grandmother did
to secure her husband’s escape
from the concentration camp
It is something, we say, anyone would do
The body as currency   The body as guarantee
If you were asked to do this
to keep a person you loved alive
If you knew this was the price   If you knew you would be asked
half a century later    to reveal it
When the bombing is over, if something remains,
will the child be found?  Will she, years from now,
in a moment of calm that we might imagine –
the sea drifting outside a window, a warm breeze,
fragrance of oranges –keep telling the story?

Day 172

Suppose we came back as ghosts asking the unasked questions….
(Adrienne Rich)

Listen to the voices of those
who died sleeping in their beds
who died sitting in their rooms
who died walking by the way
who died stepping down their stairs
who died standing in line for food
who died talking to their sisters
who died holding their infants
who died running to save their children—
they hover among the living, the barely living
Their words are carried on the wind
The cries, the anger, the questions
they never got to ask
The air around the fallen buildings 
gray as concrete, not empty, populated 

Day 170/171

Guernica.  The head thrown back,
mouth open, an angle
wider than any human mouth, a scream
unending, uncontainable. Agonized.
Never to forget.
Hours, whole afternoons
standing in front of it
at the MOMA in New York.
The faces the contorted bodies
At fifteen, taking the Long Island Railroad
into the city, then the subway.
Week after week
to stand before the painting over and over
compelled to study it, to take it in
by something I couldn’t – then –
understand   Yesterday the video
of a child, maybe Dashiell’s age,
alone, no parents, carrying
an empty carseat
through the streets of Gaza
crying to no one, no one 

Day 169

I made a note about shoes.  The children are shoeless.
Small feet make their way
over broken ground.  Torn wire,
jutting bits of concrete.  Why would you say ‘be careful’?
They dig in the rubble for something to eat. There’s nothing.
There has been nothing for weeks.  How
can they still be walking, moving?  Where are their shoes? 
A mother frantically looks for her child’s shoes
but she has gone mad with hunger, grief; it’s her child
she’s looking for. I made a note
about feet.  How perfect they are
when a child is born, the toes ten pearls.
How soft before they touch the earth.

Day 168

A branch of the tree outside my window
blown down by the wind.  New growth on it
green-golden, no chance for these leaves
to uncurl, extend.  A woman weeps outside her tent:
I have nothing to feed my baby.  He was born
three days ago, my breasts have not filled.
All day he cries because he is starving.
She has been living on weeds, birdseed.  I sit
at my desk, watching a wind tear through the garden.
Between my firstborn and my second I carried a child
seventeen weeks, felt her move within me, then bled and bled
one night, blood soaking the sheets.
It was not the child I bled, but what fed her. Held
her. The ultrasound
showed her unmoving in my womb.  Not viable
was what they told me, which meant she was dead.  Starved.
The branch lies under the tree. Rain. Ants beginning to swarm there.
Life feeding on death. This woman
is holding her infant: his wide eyes, thin legs.
His crying is so faint, it is almost silent.  If
she had milk for him he might open like a leaf.

Day 167

Why did I pick up this child
and carry her with me
from the ruined house
and not my other children?
Was she sitting beside me on the rug?
Had I been feeding her at the table?
Were we asleep together in the narrow room
that looked onto the garden?
A child’s counting game:  the garden is gone,
the room is gone, the table is gone,
the rug is gone.  The house is gone.
And the other children? the boy
with the bright laugh, the tall boy who ran
faster than all the others? the girl
who was too small even to know her name?
In boxes in the bombed childrens’ hospital, a doctor
is sorting severed limbs.  He labels
the boxes:  Hammad, foot.  Samira, right arm.
As though the limbs could some day
rejoin the bodies they came from.

Day 88

(The Graves)

The living sleep between their dead.
On one side this man’s three children are buried
together in a single grave,
the way they liked to sleep
in one bed.  On the other side
of him, his wife
in a grave with women
she didn’t know, whom now
she will know through all eternity.
Am I living? He asks himself.
In the night filled with drones
he can barely hear his own breath.