by John Linstrom
Rescuers pull a child out of the rubble of a building in Khan Younis, on October 24, 2023. Photo: Mahmud Hams / AFP / Getty via The Atlantic
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for Gaza The sun darkened, and the moon, stars falling from heaven, powers shaken. A toddler is lifted from a pocket of air below a concrete slab barely held by neighbors: her eyes are hollow planets, dry, they stare—these are not her parents, she had just been napping and now the world has gone all dust and jagged. It was very loud, then very quiet. This child is the same age as my own daughter who wakes with the sun in the crib across the hall each day. This child is your child; she is one of two million. O God, that you would come down but you nor no one ever else would be this child’s mother, nor the quilt to pull down from over the couch, the rocking chair, the picture of the rabbit at the end of the hall, the pitcher of juice, the stuffed dog. This child will now be fed the bread of tears: you have given her tears to drink. This night is too dark, carries no answer, and the only words that come in the furtive inky air are keep awake. When she cries, what father will come in to lift her in the night? Keep awake. Was there a sibling for whom those dry eyes moistened? Keep awake. O God, that you would come down and shield these children from the blinding grief that falls with hate, from the ancient territorial tragedy as we grasp for the revealing of some balm this child is stricken to the root deeper than tears, than her voice and my God may we keep awake, for all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth until we cry out for this stricken girl and for her loose our voices and O God kindle our brushwood souls and fire our water to boiling—powers shaken, restore us that we might be saved from this, that all might be saved in this night for yes, I see, you have come down and are there: crushed beneath the stone, and there, sprinting over, lifting boulders, and there: neighbors lift you and you stare out among us as stars fall from heaven and staring, wordlessly demand, for every child, for every shining light threatened in the falling night, to keep awake.
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John Linstrom’s first collection of poems To Leave for Our Own Country is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in April of 2024. This poem, “Keep Awake,” was written in his role as Poet in Residence at Trinity Lower East Side Lutheran Parish in Manhattan and was read in worship for the First Sunday in Advent. His poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Northwest Review, North American Review, and The Christian Century. He is the series editor of The Liberty Hyde Bailey Library for Cornell University Press, making available the works of environmental poet-philosopher L. H. Bailey (1858-1954). John holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Environment from Iowa State University and a PhD in English and American Literature from New York University. He lives with his wife and their young daughter in Queens, NY.
Lament submerged in the horror of the facts ... thank you