Day 454

Three children are standing
outside the tent they have made
from bits of cloth, plastic wrapping,
paper.  It has all fallen apart
in the rain.  It’s not
a tent anymore but a tangle of wetness,
one piece indistinguishable
from another, the way bodies
that have been bombed —
their parents, their brothers —
become indistinguishable
from each other.  The way,
when they went to find them
in the place where they had been
killed, the children found hands,
toes, pieces of shirts; but no
parents.  No brothers.  No
whole bodies they could
identify.  Three children stand
in the rain, sorting through
what had sheltered them
for a while, trying to identify
one panel, one shred of cloth:
this was the door we made,
this was what we used to hang
over what we called a window.  But now
with everything else that isn’t
left for them, this too — 
the naming of things —
is slipping away from them
in the rain that keeps falling, falling.

Day 453

from a photograph

The doctor walks slowly
through the rubble of his hospital,
tanks surrounding him.  He is alone,
the only one walking.
He is still in his white coat.
He knows with each step
he approaches what may be his death.
He thinks of his son, who was killed
just weeks ago.  Another son,
still alive.  Is he thinking about
the years he has lived? The hospital
broken, shattered.  Agonized patients.
His parents, his training, his wife?  Those
he has worked with through all these months?
Despite the wound in his leg
he moves without stopping, deliberately.
With each step he knows he is moving closer
to their snipers, their taunts,
their instruments of torture.
He moves slowly, steadily.
They cannot take this from him:
his dignity, his steadfastness,
whatever they are planning to do to him.

Day 452

The doctors can’t cure this nine month old child
of the bacteria that occupies his gut
because there are few antibiotics
and the water he needs to rehydrate
is the same contaminated water he drank
that gave him the infection.
If he were elsewhere, if this were another time,
he would go home, be fed, hydrated, given
medicines, and heal.  His parents
know that what he needs
will kill him, but what can they do?  He’s
thirsty, he’s crying out for water. 
What they can give him
will soothe his thirst and poison him.
And the doctors who save him for an hour,
a night, know that they’re saving him
only to see him buried, days
from now, in the hospital yard. 

Day 451

One of the infant twins
dies of cold.  A day later
the other follows.  Their mother,
whose womb was so full, sits
in the freezing tent
with empty arms.  They’d grown
so still, who moved
vibrantly for weeks inside her.
Their cries had become weaker
than they were the minute
they’d slipped into this world.
In the end they even stopped
sucking the trickles of milk
she offered them.  First one,
then the other.  She had imagined them
playing, walking, pulling off
each other’s shoes, giggling.
Now all she has left of them
are their names.  Now
she must put away their tiny shirts,
the cloths she swaddled them in.

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.