Day 262

A year ago Refaat was picking strawberries.
I have a picture of him:  smiling,
wearing a red shirt, holding a tray
of strawberries so ripe you can taste them
from the photograph.  Did he take them
home?  Eat a few of them
in his car?  Share them
with his daughter, who would learn
weeks later that she was pregnant?
Save some for the younger ones,
for his wife, for a student
who would drop by later
to show him a poem?  An ordinary
day.  The sun so bright
it made the smell of strawberries
so intense the car would hold it
for hours.  Refaat driving, thinking
of poetry, of walking on the beach.
Summer.  Refaat alive.  His daughter,
his yet-to-be-born grandson,
who would live
not quite three months.  The field not
burned, abundant with strawberries.

Day 261

They are rebuilding a house
where their house had fallen.
Why rebuild? It will only
be bombed again, the boy
says to his father.  The father, whose 
right arm has been injured, hangs
useless from his shoulder,
doesn’t answer, hands
the child (with
his left hand) a small
block of concrete the child
can hold, says to him Here,
put it here.  Others have come
to help. They work, silently
or talking.  Laughing
at times.  At times weeping.
It is good in the cool of early morning
to lay one piece of concrete against another,
to feel the vigor of hands, legs. 
The child sets down the block
where his father is pointing.  Sees
that it balances.  Begins to understand how
it will make the corner of a room.

Day 260

Smell of decay.  The dust, the canvas
walls of the tents, this hospital floor.
What did they do to you
when you were tortured? one surgeon
asks his friend. They are sitting
in the crowded corridor
in bloody scubs, not
having others.  The one
who had been tortured
hangs his head, shakes it slowly.
Too unbearable to tell, he says
to the bloodstained linoleum,
but it sounds like nothing, like the sound
of roots plunging downward, the loneliness
at the sea’s bottom, broken fingers
grasping at light.  This day
they have treated sixty, seventy
children, most of whom died, many
of whom may die in days,
weeks.  Once, the surgeon
who was tortured
tells his friend, jasmine
grew along these roads.
It pervaded the air. He raises
his eyes, looks down the corridor
of death.  Tries for a second
to remember the voices
of children playing.  How
did you survive? the other
asks, though no one now
could define survival.

Day 259

Forgive me, the mother is saying to her child.
Forgive me, I was not able to come to you.
All the days of your life, when you called me I came.
The sun was hot today, the air fetid.  I know
you would have been walking with me.
I know we would have been talking
about the sea, about birds
flying over the sea.
Forgive me, for I could not save you.  Forgive me,
my hands were not strong enough to save you
from the death that came for you.  A mother goes searching
for food, comes home to find her child dead.  What
were the words you cried out as the house
turned dark, collapsed around you? Were you stunned
to silence?  Did you call
my name?  

Day 258

Abubaker saw a boy with no shoes.  No home,
no food, no family.  He could give the boy
a little food, though nothing else; so
that’s what he did. The boy ate, sitting
in the dust.  Since he had no
fork he ate with his hands, and when
he was finished eating he gave Abubaker
the dish without cleaning it, since
there was no water.  When
was the last time you saw
your family, Abubaker asks the boy,
but the boy shakes his head,
doesn’t know the answer, can’t say
what year this is or what month.

Day 257

(from a photograph)

Look at these little girls sitting in a tent.
They look like any girls anywhere.
They’re wearing t-shirts, jeans.  They are sitting upright,
clearly paying attention
to what a teacher is telling them.
Books are open in front of them.  No matter
that it’s a tent and not a classroom.  No matter
there aren’t chairs, tables.  They have made this tent
into a place of learning.  (The teacher is telling them
about fractions:  half this times three-quarters that.
This percent of illness times this percent starvation.
This percent childhood times this percent grief.)
They are writing carefully in their little notebooks.
The tent shakes now and then as bombs explode near them.

Day 256

(with love for Refaat)

No pause, there is none.  No respite.
And yet when she wakes she is grateful
for light.  Grateful for the breath
of her children beside her.  They
are still there, despite everything.
Outside the tent there are people moving,
gathering weeds to eat, taking cupsful
of water from a jug someone has brought.
Day begins.  People greet one another,
ask how the night was.  Once she dreamed
of the books she would write; now
it is just about staying alive, keeping
her children alive.  Hour to hour. 
The smallest one wakes,
cries. She is thinking of what
she will feed him; her breasts empty,
the bag where she keeps what food
she can find, empty.  She takes him
in her arms, sings to him. ( If I must die
you must live/to tell
my story….) Later
she will go looking.  For now
what she can offer him
is a song. This story.

Day 255

The child has lost an eye.
When they bombed her house
some debris flew into it
and took with it half her world.
She’s four.  Now everything
will look different to her.
Now she will see what’s
in front of her
with the eye that looks outward.
And with the other, the one
that can only see what’s missing,
she scans the landscapes of loss.
Her mother.  Her friend.  Her street.

Day 254

There was a bird whose feet
were caught in the wires,
and a group of people who came
to save him.  It seemed important;
so many were dying, hundreds
in only a matter of hours.  One
started to climb a utility pole.  Another
boosted him up til he found a foothold.
Others held blankets to catch the bird
if he were injured and couldn’t
fly. Still others — a lot
of them, kids — stood by
and cheered.  Every step
nearer the bird drew louder
cheers, until the man
who was climbing had reached
the top.  The wires
were live with current; the climber
cautious, not knowing
whether the next touch would bring
shock, even death.  And the bird
crying out in pain, in fear.  The crowd
crying out.  At last the climber
grasped the trapped foot, held it
between his fingers, pulled the wire
back with his other hand, and the bird
took off into the sky
as though this had been simply
a small event.  The climber
climbed down, swarmed
by the crowd.  Let it be known,
one young man said, stepping up
onto a wooden box that was
somehow there, that on this day
there occurred a liberation!
Bombs, drones in the background.
The bird flying far, far, beyond
where anyone could see. 

Day 253

The road strewn
with pieces of lives:  a towel, a tv, 
A pair of running shoes, debris that is
unrecognizable but there are kids
in the boredom of late afternoon
between bombings, playing
in the road, attempting
to fit one shattered thing to another. 
The road strewn with old tools
and pieces of new ones.  Smartphones.
Faucets.  These were the things
we lived with.  This
was the way we lived.
These were the objects of our love
and of our solitude; these
were what we thought we could use
to construct our days.
And among these things 
lie bodies.  Among these things,
a severed arm.  A hand.  Will anyone come,
one of the kids asks,
and sew this hand
back onto whoever has lost it?
The kids stop their playing,
look up to see what sound it is
that comes from the sky.
And how will they find that person?
And where will they get
a needle that can do this?
And with what thread?