Day 644

The school they were sheltering in
has gone up in flames.  Tell me,
who could escape it?  Not
the pregnant mother
with her toddler son.  Not
the father who’d already buried
his wife and five children, every
loss slowing his steps.  Not
the elderly poet, the builder
whose legs had been rendered
useless, the friends
who wrapped their arms
tenderly around each other's
waists and waited, waited.  Lay
waiting together as flames
raced toward them.  Who
could escape the roar, the pulsing,
the screams?  The horrified eyes?
School that had held children’s
singing, now a ruined
cradle.  Crucible.  Urn.

Day 643

from a photograph

The child sits on the floor
in a bare room.  Her right thigh
is bandaged.  From an earlier
wound?  From today?  No one,
for now, seems to be with her.
She stares blankly
at the photographer.  She has been
at a clinic.  She’d gone there
with her mother.  She’d gone
because one of them — both
of them? — needed help;
and what happened instead
was a bombing.  Ten children
martyred.  She had been talking
with some of them while
they were waiting.  She’d
been standing so close.
No one noticed
the planes approaching, no one
heard them until it was
too late.  The girl
she’s been talking to
lay dead on the ground.
The boys who had gathered
around them were also dead,
three of them.  She sits
on the tile floor, trying
to make herself remember
what their names were,
where they said they were from.

Day 642

They are laying the bodies of children
side by side in the road.  A line
of children stretching
farther than you can weep, from one
grief to another, one story
to another, one set of crayons,
one song, one grandmother’s
wailing, one purple t-shirt
with bunnies printed on it
to the last.  One canvas shoe.  One
headless doll, two toddlers
without heads.  They
are laying the bodies of children
side by side on the hard
ground because there’s no
place to bury them.  As though
they were wooden blocks, a 
footpath, slats of a bridge.
Where will it lead, this bridge
of halted lives?  Who
will cross over it?

Day 641

For Manal Miqdad


A post to my friends
Who have books I loaned you:
If I should die, keep them. They’re yours.
A post to my cousin: if nothing happens
To my library, it’s yours.

Poet, mother of three,
you ask yourself in your journal
why, with bombs falling
not far from you, you’re thinking
about your books. All the books
you lost in the last siege, then replaced.
All the books you’ve loved, learned from,
read passages from to your friends,
your children. How, you ask yourself,
will you carry them when you flee?
How many will you be able to hold?
How much will they slow you down?
Will your children take some of them?
They’ll be carrying their own things.
Why are you thinking so desperately
about your books? Why books?
All this you’re asking yourself
as bombs fall on your city.
You remember hours reading, studying.
How they shaped your life, these books.
The past, you write — “once
Upon a time”— is now a cemetery.

Day 640

Where has the time gone,
your sister asks you. It’s late.
You’re lying side by side
in the tent. The night wind
blows sand against the canvas flaps.
Your small brothers sleep restlessly,
crying out now and then. In hunger?
Fear? The summer night is warm.
The air the tent still holds
clings to your body, even soothing.
Where has it gone? she asks again.
We were young and now it feels
our youth has been drained from us.
We laughed. We danced. Now our days
are spent looking for water. Rationing
food. You hear her beneath the sound
of explosions not far away. You want
to answer her but you can’t
find the words. Sleep overcomes
you. A shroud. Almost comforting.

Day 639

There’s no formula
to feed her baby
in all of Gaza, and starvation
has dried her breasts.  She holds him
in her arms, waits
for the liquid from a can of lentils
to boil on the fire she’s made
from sticks and paper.  She knows
he needs more, and she knows
this is all she can give him.
Everyone in the neighboring tents
is saving the liquid for her
from their cans: cans of beans,
more lentils, expired cans of anything
they can get.  She boils
the liquid. All her son
has known of this world
is hunger and explosions.
At least, she thinks, she can feed him
something.  At least, for an hour
or two, he might sleep, his body
aching a little less.

Day 638

The surgeon is standing
beside a child’s bed.
The child is eight.  She’s
been shot in the head
by a soldier.  Close range.
At a food distribution hub,
her father witnessing.
The doctor studies the image
he holds in his hands:  there
is the bullet, lodged
in the child’s cerebellum.
Even if he can remove it,
will she ever be able to walk?
Breathe on her own?  The surgeon
weighs the odds, knows
if he doesn’t remove the bullet
the child will die.  He sets down
the image of her brain, which,
until the bullet, he would have said
was perfect.  He cleans his hands
as well as possible, calls
for his nurses.  Takes up
his tarnished instruments of hope.

Day 637

Here is the place
where we played ball.
Here was a field, a street.
Here there were houses; there
you can see the remains of a school.
Here was the time
when we walked out the door
and found our friends waiting.
Here were the bright afternoons,
hot in summer, crisp in autumn,
when we learned to kick hard,
to run fast, punt
with our heads.  Here we shouted
to each other when someone
scored, here we taught one another
how to play better. 
Here we were happy.
So we take this ball, kick it
into the fetid air, the smoke, the dust.
Someone kicks it back, beyond us:
those piles of rubble 
to the left, the right,
can be our goals. We will play
despite everything. When,
why, would we ever stop
playing? 

Day 636

He’s ten.  He’s sitting
on the ground, holding 
his younger brother
in his lap.  Next to them,
lying down, is their sister, clearly
wounded, crying.  He is so tender
with them, you’d think
he was already grown.  The girl
is crying for their mother.  He
is stroking her hair as a mother
might, or a father.  He’s
ten.  He should be running
down the street with friends,
kicking a ball, shouting.
He should be sprinting
into the sea, diving
under a wave, coming up
smiling.  Instead
he is telling his sister
and brother, Mommy
will come back soon.  She’s
coming… Instead
he’s looking up at the sky, 
looking east to where
there’s a pillar of smoke.
More frightened
than he will admit
to them. Wondering if what 
he’s telling them
is the truth. 

Day 635

This child is walking away
from his tent.  His brothers and mother
are in the tent, sleeping.
He’s twelve.  He’s wanting to walk
to where they’re distributing food,
though he knows the danger. That’s
why he’s walking away now,
at two in the morning, because he knows
they’d all keep him from going.
He wants to bring something for them
that will keep them alive
a few more days.  He wants
to feed them.  He’s
the first son, his father
martyred a year ago.
He’s walking under the stars now:
thin hook of a moon, the summer night
mild, dark air enveloping him.
Quiet.  No drones, no planes,
no shots being fired.  Two in the morning.
He walks, walks more quickly, knows
what he’s risking, knows how fast
and agile he is, thinks he could dive
behind a rock.  Imagines now
what he’ll do when the soldiers
start firing.  How he’ll push
through the crowd, how he’ll carry back
the little box of food.  Imagines
the squeals of his brothers
when they open the box.  The look
of amazement mixed with concern
on his mother’s face.