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.