Day 450

(for Dr Hussam Abu Safiya)

 
What his thoughts were
when the soldiers captured him
we don’t know, we may
never know.  What we can assume
is that they were for his patients.
The hospital had been bombed
for weeks:  one by one,
departments reduced to ruins.
Pediatrics.  ICU.   He
stayed.  He stayed, despite
their murdering his child.
He stayed despite his own wounds,
swearing to help his patients, to remain
as long as there was one who
needed him. Pleaded
with the world not to look away.
To send medicine, gauze.  On 
the last day they took him
along with the others, stripped
him naked, beat him
with electrical wire 
for his knowledge, 
his integrity, his resistance.  Have they
murdered him yet? Are they
torturing him instead, smirking
at his pain while they decide
whether to kill him?
Trying to make him writhe?
If they throw his body
wherever they may throw it
do they really believe
they can dispose of
his voice?  His compassion?

Day 449

(from a photograph)


They huddle on filthy blankets
in the remains
of what may have been a hallway
in the hospital, three children — brothers? —
sitting close together, the oldest
holding the youngest, who is maybe
fourteen, fifteen months.  The hospital
is being bombed again, has been bombed
for days.  Eighteen more killed, twenty.  Who knows
where these children’s parents are, or how
they have died?  Their eyes
are startled, hollow, terrified.  The youngest
clutches his brother’s jacket; his brother
is pulling him close, their faces
touching, the toddler’s mouth
slightly open in a cry or a whimper.
The middle brother has his hand
over his mouth — to stifle a sound?
To soothe himself?  There is such
love among them, such tenderness.
The oldest boy, who could be
nine, has promised his brothers
that he will be father to them, mother,
doctor, teacher, everything.  He will care for them
through bitter cold and explosions,
until fire, shrapnel, hunger, a sniper’s bullet
comes to claim them. 
Until no one can care for anyone anymore.

Day 448

(from a photograph)

 
The father is holding his baby,
who froze to death.  His arms
tenderly cradle the infant, whose size
is no bigger than a loaf of bread,
a parcel of books. He tried
everything he could
to warm her but cold
overtook her.  The brim
of the father’s hat
casts a shadow over his face,
but the shadow is deeper than that,
more vast than the size of his baby,
older than the weeks the baby lived.
The baby lived!  She suckled, cried.
Made small cooing sounds, looked out
at the shadowy world around her.
Her eyes met her father’s eyes.
Her perfectly swirled ears
knew the thunder of bombing,
desperate voices, screams
but also laughter.  Her father
laughed with her; this too
is etched into his face
but only as memory.  You can see it
in the way he closes his lips, 
that never again will open
to speak to her, that will only
slowly begin to release
the infinite syllables of mourning. 

Day 447

A robot detonates outside the ICU,
wounding already wounded patients,
collapsing walls, destroying medicines.
Flames rage through crowded corridors.
A doctor stands in the courtyard
surveying the damage, asking why, why?
There is no reason. The destruction
is just that: wanton, deliberate.  Patients
stumble from their beds, pulling out
their iv’s, some needing
to be carried by others. And this
happens over and over: doctors killed,
patients killed.  We will stay
until the last Palestinian is gone,
the doctor says; we will not leave
our work.  Meanwhile, not far
from there, three infants are dying
of hypothermia: slow quiet deaths
in flimsy tents on cold sand.  Death
chooses its weapons:  fire or ice,
sudden explosions or gradual fade.
Parents trying desperately to give their newborns
whatever warmth is left in their own bodies
while, only miles from where they are,
the hospital burns, burns.

Day 446

She has buried her husband, her sister,
a child.  Now she must bury another child.
Just yesterday she was brushing his hair.
Just yesterday she went out to find food
for him, leaving him with her one child,
the eldest, who’s still alive.
She found a little bread, put it
into his mouth the way one would feed
an animal or a bird. She remembers the feel
of his wet lips on her fingers, and this
she promises herself never to forget. Her daughter,
the eldest, stands next to her in the rain
as she lays the child in a white shroud
into the earth.  Rain falls on him
as he lies there, insects scurry
through newly shoveled dirt.  They may
live with him there or find their way
back up into the light.  They alone, she thinks,
are free to come and go.  She looks
at her daughter, who has lost a father,
an aunt, two brothers.  With each one
buried, the mother thinks, she’s lost
part of me too.  She thinks of the dark ground,
receiving some all at once, wrapped in white cloth,
and some, like herself, wrapped only in grief,
a little at a time. 

Day 445

She learns her cousins are still alive
but their parents are dead.  She’s eight.
Her cousins are twins, four years old.
She asks her mother what they might need,
since they’ve lost everything:  clothes, toys.
I can give them my clothes, she says; but
since their house was destroyed, all she has
is a couple of t-shirts, one pair of cotton pants
that, in the last months, have grown too short.
She lies on the floor of her tent, wondering
what she can give them to
console them.  She would give them
her toys, but she has none.  She’s made a doll
from a torn piece of a towel:  tied it with string
at the top to give it a head, drawn eyes
and a mouth with a used expo marker
she’d found in the dust.  It’s her only toy
but she’ll share it with them. The thought
calms her a little.  What they want 
most of all, she knows, is their parents
Their parents have gone to wherever it is
you go after death; they’ve joined
her own father there.  She imagines them
sitting around a table, talking and laughing,
smoking, drinking coffee, the way it was
before everything happened.  I can share
my mother with them, she thinks, and she imagines
the twins sitting on her mother’s lap
as though there were a chair, as though 
there were a warm room to sit in.

Day 444

She was waiting for the border to open
so she could leave to get treatment.
She knew her cancer was spreading,
didn’t want to tell her children, didn’t want
to tell anyone.  There was enough
for them to worry about
without worrying about the mass
that was growing in her breast.  Every day
she checked it.  Every day her hand
found its way in the dark
to the secret place it was growing.
It was firm, unmoving.  It was
claiming more space.  She thought of it
as the Occupation:  its dark
invasiveness, its inexorable advancement.
She was waiting for the border to open
so someone could remove it, give her
medicine against its onslaught,
strafe it at its roots the way bombs
had uprooted the trees of her childhood.
She was waiting, though she doubted
the border would open in time; and this
she told no one, only silently spoke at night
to the tumor, conspired with it
to keep hiding itself, whispered
they would remain at war with each other, 
a war she wasn’t willing to give up.

Day 443

A father carries his baby son
out of the hospital.  This morning
he dressed this child
in a little striped t-shirt, long
sleeves, blue pants.  Now the t-shirt
is stained with blood, pants
stained with blood, the child’s
head split open on one side.
The father tenderly carries his son,
lifts one of his legs, an arm:
limp, when only this morning
the child had been crawling
around the tent, laughing.
Laughing!  The day has passed.
The father walks through the rubble, 
cradling his son.  It’s night.
It’s raining.  He takes off
his jacket, wraps
his son in it to keep him dry
and warm, whose body already
is growing cold.  How
can he lay this child
in the hard ground?
How can the life
that was in him
be cold and gone?  How
can his son be dead
who never even learned to walk?

Day 442

(from a photograph)

She stands on what may be a beach.
Someone has brushed her hair neatly,
tied it back in a bun, held it in place
with a white headband.  She wears a dress
with a tiered skirt, ruffled half-sleeves
bordered in lace.  She’s looking at something
to her left.  She could be nine, ten.  Younger?
Her feet, in white clogs, firmly planted
on pebbly sand. In the earlobe
you can see, an earring with a little stone.
Someone has been able to care for her well
at least until now. It’s only after a moment
you notice she has just one arm.  Her left arm
hangs at her side, thumb buried in the printed fabric
of her dress.  Her right arm, amputated
at the shoulder. What is she looking at, 
mouth closed so tightly, eyes clearly
focused?   Is it all she has left behind?
Everything she can remember?   
She could be holding back tears.  She may
be watching as a cat or a dog
or a younger child, maybe hobbled,
attempts to walk toward her. There’s no one else
in the picture, the space behind her
vast. You see how alone she is, this girl
with one arm standing with nothing, no one,
around her, her dress clean and ironed
as though she were going somewhere.  As though
she were able to go somewhere.

Day 441

A child walks barefoot up a road,
surrounded on both sides by bombed-out
buildings, carrying two half-gallon
milk containers.  He is going
to get water for his family,
the ones remaining. He is eight
or nine, he wears no jacket,
only a thin shirt and shorts
though it’s late December.  Who
has sent him on this errand?
What kind of water will he find?
To whom has he said what could be
(any moment the last moment)
his final goodbye?