People are angry, frightened, lost, but highly motivated to help relieve the suffering of many many victims, neighbors, friends, and those in need.  With some people I even feel a kind of blankness that is helping them get through the challenges of  sudden rocket fire.  We have lost a lot and we cannot imagine life after this war, but there is one thing we must not lose – our compassion for the people who are considered our enemies.  Even though some of them have slaughtered, and they have families who supported their battle cry, we have to remember their humanity.  I am suddenly reminded of a poem I published in a book, Ignorant Armies, by ccc press:

ARABESQUE

 

Gaza – 1974

 

I

 

After dinner I’m alone with the grandmother,

while the men talk business 

and wives feed the children 

bumping each other in the hidden kitchen.

 

I am a guest, an English teacher new

to the Middle East, without tongue,

and I cannot play in pantomime –  

like my daughter – with the children and the goats.

 

In this bare room

the old woman talks 

as if eventually I must understand

her language

 

since she speaks in the feminine.

 

II

 

When I cannot answer, even after her long 

probing looks, she shrugs,

takes her crochet hook from a pocket,

and points out the window 

to a girl 

dancing solemnly alone.

 

Her gnarled hands, wound with pink wool, move easily, 

and soon she is making lovely rosettes in the bodice.  

I take the hook and try to imitate, slip,

slip again, finally latch through the last eye

to pull the rose together.  She smiles, 

I show her a stitch of my own

which she examines, unravels, 

then duplicates with a flourish.