Day 496/Ceasefire Day 26

Tell me, do you love this land?
We love it in the freezing rain, the wind
that blows blood-soaked dust in our faces.
Tell me, do you fear for it?
We know it is alive under the rubble.
We know there are spirits breathing there.
We know there are thousands of buried seeds.
When you look at the ruined buildings,
what do you see?
I see a man digging to find
the broken bones of his children.
I see a child holding her father’s shirt,
all she has left of him.
I see two orphaned boys
carrying buckets of water
to their siblings. Heavy as the buckets are,
the boys quicken their pace.
And where are the dead?
Their corpses are piled
one over another
in crowded graveyards
where families are living in tents
amid bodies destroyed — first
by soldiers, then by the weather.
Tell me, how can you love this?
We love it because in summer
cool breezes blow in from the sea.
We love it for the fragrance
of jasmine and oranges
that we still can smell with our hearts,
more powerful than the stench of sewage,
of the cold decaying remains of our beloved.

Day 495/Ceasefire Day 25

A year ago, when the shelter was bombed,
the baby’s mother was killed.  His father,
his older siblings, escaped; but the father
could not go back to save the smallest one,
could not get back inside.  For a year, he
has grieved, has felt a part of himself
died, got left behind with the baby.
He did not know that another father,
escaping, heard the baby’s cries,
was near enough to take him
in his arms, bring him
to his wife, his children.  For all this year
they’ve raised him as their own.
Shared the little food they’ve had
with him, helped him walk, 
talk. And now they have found
each other, the two fathers.  Now
they have stood together, facing
each other, the one who couldn’t
save his son and the one
who saved him.  Now the baby’s
first father is watching, awed, as his child
walks toward him:  confused, not
knowing him at first, turning
toward the family he’s known
all these months.  Now the father
who saved this child looks
into the eyes of the first father,
tells him, he has always been yours,
he belongs to you. And the first father
takes the boy in his arms, kisses 
his head, tears streaming down
his face.  And this is a story
of a family who had nothing,
who shared the nothing they had
with a child they picked up
by chance, because there was no one else
to claim him;  and this is a story
of a man who grieved his own inability
to save his child, whose child
is restored to him by the goodness
of people he didn’t know, whom now
he will count as family, the child
uniting them, their bond
not severable.

Day 494/Ceasefire Day 24

We will remember these days
without bombing, these afternoons
when we worked together
lifting slabs of concrete, uncovering
a pot, a cushion, a child’s toy.
We will remember the child
whose toy this was, the aunt
who leaned against the cushion,
the mother stirring rice and lentils
in this pot.  We will remember
what it is like, if the bombing
starts again, to have whole mornings
of quiet, listening to the rain
beat against the panels of the tent.
We will remember our own
strength when it becomes clear
we will need to call on it
again.  We will remember
how we resisted.  Do they think
we will not resist?

Day 493/Ceasefire Day 23

What you remember
was that the children had been playing
in front of the house.  A clear
afternoon, warming a little, the children
having thrown their jackets
on the ground.  What you remember
was first the sound, then the whole
building shaking.  Shaking.  You ran
outside, calling their names.  Calling
for them to run, because you could feel
the shaking grow stronger, the black smoke
thicken.  Then you couldn’t see.  Then
you heard the sound of walls
collapsing.  You were standing
there where you’re standing
now, the children obscured
by the smoke, when you heard —
then saw — the front of the house
fall, as though the ground
had been taken from under it, as though
it were just a children’s tower of blocks.
You’ve come back now, after all
these months, to see 
how it fell on them, the children, 
how it crushed them there
in the midst of their game. What you remember
is their small intact jackets — one,
two, three — the jackets they’d tossed
to the side of the house, blue
blue and green, still
lying there on the ground
when the smoke cleared.

Day 492/Ceasefire Day 22

(for Asem Alnabih and Refaat Alareer)

What greater act of friendship
than to search for the body
of your friend for days,
going from one 
destroyed home to another,
asking this person, that person,
and at last finding the makeshift grave
in someone’s destroyed
yard, a piece of paper
on a stick, the handwritten
(with a blue Expo marker?) name
of your friend and the day he was murdered?
What greater love
than to walk, carrying his body
and the bodies of those
who were killed with him
to the graveyard in the neighborhood
he lived in from childhood, the place
he loved best?  Imagine that procession,
four bodies in a single bag, other bodies
in other bags, your friend’s body
not even whole.  Bodies recognized
from the clothes they were wearing,
since the flesh, the features, had decomposed.
What greater tribute 
than that walk,
finally to lay your friend to rest
in a known place, a place
he would have asked for?  

Day 491/Ceasefire Day 21

This mother is calling her children
to gather around her, the living children
and the dead.  Come, she says,
it is night, I will tell you a story.
How you have grown! she says
to the youngest, the one
who stopped growing, then
grew smaller and smaller, 
who died because he was hungry.
How beautifully you have learned
to speak, she tells the one
whose face was destroyed, whose mouth
could never be found.  One daughter
who’s alive holds a living sister
and a sister who died
on her lap, strokes
their long hair, whispers
something to them
that makes them both laugh.
The mother hushes them gently.
Listen now to the story
I’m about to tell you, she
says.  It’s our story.  It’s
the story of how we will
always return
to this place, the story
of why we died
and how we have stayed alive.

Day 490/Ceasefire Day 20

The family comes back to the place
where their house was.  They have survived
except for one: their father’s brother.
When the house was destroyed,
their uncle was killed.  The rest
fled south, managed somehow
to live.  Now they’ve come back,
though what they’ve come back to
is nothing they can live in.  They search
in the rubble for their uncle, for anything
they can find that was his.  Nothing.
They plant their tent over what was
their living room.  All day they clear
stones, fallen concrete.  At night they stand
together under the stars.  We
have survived, except
for one.  The littlest girl
thinks she sees her uncle in a shadow
the moon makes.  Her brother
says he thought he saw him earlier,
between parts of collapsed walls.  Their father
says he heard his brother’s voice
telling him to lift this slab, not that one.
Then he is here with us, the littlest one
says, and the night sky fills
for a moment with his face, his words. 

Day 489/Ceasefire Day 19

Refaat’s mother dreams Refaat
comes to visit her in a white gown,
wearing an elegant watch.  She
has bought a special watch
to give him, but when she sees him
she knows the watch he has
is better.  What could this mean?
The white gown?  Like the white cloth
Refaat wanted us to buy 
to make kites?  Could it be
kite-cloth?  For him to sail,
a white kite in the sky?  Cloudless
sky, sky without warplanes.
And the watch?  Does his mother
meet him, bearing a watch
that tells the time of our days,
the time we are living in,
rubble time, rebuild time? Grieving time,
time to measure our losses, time
to know how long it will take
for our souls to come back
into our bodies, weary bodies
from all these months?  And Refaat’s
watch — is it the watch
of infinite time, stretch
of eternity, vast perspective
in which Gaza is held,
where the hills will be green again,
the buildings whole again and forever,
the streets filled with people?

Day 488/Ceasefire Day 18

(for Refaat Alareer, a call and response)

Plumes of black smoke.
They have found the body of Refaat.
The ceasefire has made it possible.
Ash of anything that remains
besides stone and concrete.
After more than a year
they’ve identified him, given him
a proper burial.
Will the soldiers as they retreat
not allow even one small thing
to be preserved?  One ribbon
of clothing, one
child’s shoe?  When he was murdered
there were houses here, streets.  Cafés.
They are burning everything
they have not destroyed.  There
was a university.  There was a clinic.
Twice, three times, I dreamed
he was not dead, he was hiding,
he would re-emerge
when the worst was over.
He would tell his story.
There are children digging
to find whatever they can find.
His oldest child murdered too, his small grandson.
Now their lives are lived over corpses.
Now these graves are their playground.
Now they sleep on the ruins of their homes.
Now we know where he lies.  His words, his poems
reach across the world.  Now we know
where he is.  And he has
not been destroyed. He is everywhere.

Day 487/Ceasefire Day 17

We were never defeated, the girl
tells her small brother, too small
to understand the words; but the girl
wants him to know.  They destroyed
our house, set fire to the shelter
we lived in, deprived us
of water.  But we never gave up.
When they cut the electricity
we took it from the sun.
When they bombed the hospitals
the doctors made makeshift hospitals
in tents.  When there was no
gauze, we borrowed it
from the dead.  When there
was no food, we gathered greens
that grew between slabs of concrete,
cooked fallen birds over fires
we made from sticks.  We were hungry,
we ate.  We wrapped you
in whatever clothes we weren’t
wearing, slept with you
between us so you could be warmed
by the warmth of our bodies.
You need to know this, you
who are too young
to tell your own story.  This
is our story. They blasted our streets,
wore our neighborhoods down
to gravel.  But they never
silenced us.  They never crushed us.