The following poems were included with Kim Chernin's article, The Long Path Out of Denial: Zionism, Heartache, and a New Vision of Israel and Palestine, in the November/December 2009 issue of Tikkun.
Each poem below references a Jewish prophet and one of the 418 Palestinian villages destroyed in 1948.
Jeremiah
What shall I call you
who walk behind me
touching my shoulder
with your finger tips?
You move with the tread of mountains
rising from river beds
preserver of centuries
still here when the olive was
brought forth from the stone
When joy and mirth depart
when cities grow desolate
the bones of prophets will arise
from their graves.
a pen of iron has set it down:
"Be thou instructed, O Jerusalem,
Lest my soul depart from thee"
Abil al-Qamh
High up from the high mountain
grief makes her way down.
Let the hills bow down
beneath this sorrow
The river valleys have run dry
Walk out with me into this morning
Do you dare to see what I see?
Unknown Prophet
Have you taught the north wind
to speak for you?
and told the hills your names?
Make me your town-crier
I will pour myself out
we have forgotten the name brother
we have forgotten the name sister
people, my people, do you not see
how calamity has befallen us?
We are as red dust on the desert
rose and on the rose of Sharon
nettle in the mustard patch
sorrow in the shittah tree*
it will not thrive
it will grow no more among us.
Do you not see?
*Wood from which the Ark
of the Tabernacle was built.
‘Agir
The village thinks back
to an imperial age
but no one remembers now
to bake the famous bread
recorded by al-Maydis,
the 10th-century
Arab geographer.
Some years ago, after
the village had gone down
the old woman
dying
far from home,
is said to have cried out
‘al-Nasuffiyya.'
She called to the old wadi
as if it were her last child
born in the Roman town of Accaron.
Zachariah
In the month of Sebat
in the second year of Darius
a vision:
A man on a red horse
among myrtle trees
Three red horses, speckled and white.
What are these?
They walk to and fro
to witness through the earth.
says the angel among the myrtle trees
I say: If the angel will not appear
among the myrtle trees
and the man with a measuring line
to measure Jerusalem
will not appear
who will command us to inhabit
Jerusalem without walls?
Bayt ‘Itab
These bones at the interrupted grave:
a girl on her way to the carob tree.
Lamentation
Let lamentation walk
barefoot over this earth
her head covered in ashes
She will sit down
beneath the terebinth
and give her hair to the wind
The ways of mourning are old,
so old in this land
where the thorn and thistle
the wormwood and the spikenard thrive.
She will wear sackcloth
She will rend her garments in grief
she will lay her down
by the Hill of Moreh
and weep for father and son
in the place called Moriah.
Grab hold of her.
What does she know?
We will not let her rest
body, bone and dust
sprung from this earth.
Mi'ar
He is twelve
he stands well back from the field
where men in uniform
are bringing down the villagers
They are crouched down,
some have been kneeling
to bring in the crops
up above, the sun slips smoothly out of sight
it might almost be a day like any other
the wind at work in the cypress tree
a girl springs up and up into the air
and comes apart
He is twelve
That was his sister
Shechinah Among the Ruins
Shechinah picking her way
among the ruins
She is sorrow older than earth.
How long since one of us
cried out her name?
Mother of grief, our comforter,
I no longer believe
that you will weep for us.
