ANITA BARROWS, [email protected]
Barrows has been writing a poem every day for Gaza. Her published works include three volumes of poetry: Exile, We Are the Hunger, and Testimony. Her translations with Joanna Macy of Rainer Maria Rilke’s work, including Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, have been widely quoted.
Her most recent — Day 599 — gives thanks to Dr. Ezzideen Shehab who is in Gaza and has also been writing poetry.
Two of her other poems:
Day 593
A few grains of rice. Canned lentils.
How long can a child of four
live on these? How long
can she survive when the rice
is boiled in foul water? When
foul water is all
she has to drink? You tell her
to sleep. You tell her
to save her energy. You see her
sitting outside the tent, sifting sand
through her small, weak fingers.
trying to build a hill out of sand,
but the sand slides down, down
and down, and her hill
will not stand. And she
is too weak to stand, too weak
to withstand not being able
to make her hill, and she starts
crying now for her father
who was killed, her three brothers
killed, her infant sister
who died of hunger, for the sky
that used to be clear of warplanes,
for the hill she is trying
to make out of sand
that keeps falling, falling.
Day 574
You have no wood, so you gather
your own old shoes
to burn for cooking. Shoes
that carried you to the university,
Shoes that walked to your uncle’s
house, your grandfather’s. Shoes
you were wearing when you first
fell in love, when you wrote
your first poem, when you took
your first child outside
for the first time. The canvas
tops, the rubber soles
burn slowly. They give off
a foul smell. You have time
to remember: these
were the shoes you wore
to see a movie you loved. These
were the shoes you wore
to hear a lecture
by the professor you admired,
murdered shortly into the genocide.
These were the shoes
you wore to search
for your mother’s body,
your sister’s, your two
younger brothers’, the day
your house was bombed.
Now they are burning
so you can cook rice
for your children, warm the beans
that are almost gone, even warm
your own hands a little
as you stand outside your tent,
smoke from the shoes
rising into the troubled sky.