Four Poems For Gaza

by Jeremiah Kim

Painting by Sliman Mansour

October Air
The October air
is hot with blood:
Today, they try
to bury Gaza 

The rivers are silent as
the waters of heaven rage;
and my city’s idle chatter
is shattered at its seams

The youth have left
the mosques and temples:
They have come to make
these savage streets holy 

The blood of martyrs
fills the air;
and the air rushes
like a flood into our lungs 

You (for Refaat Alareer)
You,
who have outwitted
the terror flames of
a far dying sun

You,
spinning songs
louder
than the bombs
that come each night
like a drunk,
pounding violently
at the door

You,
for whom dust
has become
a second skin,
and death
a bird perched
on the shoulder

You,
who have lost years
and gained eternity

You,
martyr,
fighter,
witness,
poet,
doctor,
student,
father,
friend,
little one

You,
in your millions,
who shall inherit
the earth

You,
who are the light
of the world
and I,
blinded
by your beauty ​

​Midnight in Gaza

Midnight in Gaza
the clouds have parted
and the air
scraped raw to bone
takes no more screams

The bombs and
burning white gas
have done their work
for the day

Death is already
hungry
for tomorrow

And the people
know it

Yet
many have stayed

The children find a way
to sleep
tonight

God has not forsaken them

Freedom
to the last
is theirs

Time spills out
fast and dark
from each second
like an open wound

The world holds still
waiting
watching

The Circle Unbroken (for Palestine)
Your tears are endless;
your blood is the sky;
and the land which weeps
from the ashes of flowers,
from the ashes of limbs
in winter
will flood again come summer.

Your prayer is a tongue of flame;
your lament is the ocean;
and the nation which seethes, reaching
for the heavy sword of freedom,
for the heart of God
will yet ascend the iron gate,
will yet behead the serpent,
will yet rain down like vengeance,
like time
while the palace guards are sleeping.

Your warriors are a covenant of angels;
your mothers are aching tree roots
too furious,
too deep to kill;
and the circle of clouds,
the whispered promise
which haunts
the hours of your torturers,
confessing how and why
you still fight,
you still love,
you still believe,
can never be broken.

Jeremiah Kim is a peace activist, poet and member of the Saturday Free School for Philosophy and Black Liberation.