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Richard Hoffman: Mourning Gaza
And yet we think we can go on,
our earlier weeping this morning need not
bleed all over the day with its innocent and growing
receptivity to sunshine.
What does the naked soldier take off when he puts on that uniform?
What does the pale infant turning to dust
in the gray light deep in the powdery rubble know
of the torn hands of her parents digging to find her?
Nothing. Nothing is the answer.
And when the soldier takes off his uniform what does he find?
Nothing. Nothing is the answer. And it is the same nothing.
And what is it we put on when we dress for the day?
And how do we know
our tears will still be there when we come back for them?
What if they aren’t? What will wait for us instead?
Nothing. That same nothing will be waiting for us.
How much music does it take to stay sane? How many poems?
How many friends? Books? TV programs? Theaters? Restaurants? Games?
Can sanity be sanity if it requires our turning away?
Oh, you rocking on the train across from me,
I do not envy you your animated chatter, your laughter,
ignorant even of its ignorance; ignorance protecting innocence.
Although I would like to linger in a self before this knowledge,
I find there never was one, only a sleeper, dreaming
a future could be made of proferred tropes and images,
a cognitive architecture of complex design
a mosque or temple or cathedral, a sanctuary
with its lexicon of exclusion, its checkpoints, tripwires, alarms.
Let us be done with each other then.
Let us go our lonely and separate ways.
Let us at least stop killing one another and keep silent
until we are sure what to say
and whether or not it should be said,
and whether or not it will be understood.
Let the eaves and corners of our houses =>
give the wind its voice, our hollowness moaning
with vowels from far away, groans that never grew into words,
ululations of ancestors,
wailing for innocence everywhere.
This mourning is a debt we owe.
No anger can replace it.
Revenge cannot supplant it.
Forgetting will not last.
How else now except by falling on the ground,
by crawling in the dust, can we remember who we are?
How else can we remember who we hoped we would become?
~~~~
Richard Hoffman’s recent books include the memoir Half the House, the essay collection Remembering the Alchemists and the poetry collection Without Paradise. He is Emeritus Writer-in-Residence at Emerson College.
Poem copyright 2024 Richard Hoffman
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Beautiful, powerful, and so relevant. I was struck by the line, “and what does the soldier find when he takes off his uniform?” If he is from the occupier, how does he live with himself? How can he stand to know what he has done? Where is his humanity? Where is his conscious? What has he become? What are we if we remain silent?
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Yes, I admire this poem.
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A powerful poem that embodies so much of what I am feeling at this terrible moment. Thank you Richard and Vox Populi.
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Thanks, Kathryn. I admire your writing and activism.
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Love this poem, Richard. So many of the lines and images jump out and claw at me. Mourning… silence… ignorance protecting innocence*… the question of sanity. [*What good is the innocence of hard-butt people who embrace willful ignorance in order to feel safe and who insist upon dismissing the experiences of others?]
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Love this poem, Richard. Mourning… silence… ignorance protecting innocence… the question of sanity. So many of the lines and images claw at me. Miss you loads.
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For me, these are the lines: “Let us at least stop killing one another and keep silent / until we are sure what to say / and whether or not it should be said, / and whether or not it will be understood.”
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Yes
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Somehow the link in”Continue reading” goes to another site. But I can
get this via voxpopulisphere. –Arlene
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It did that for me, but I tried again and it was ok
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Hmm. Sorry Arlene. Our web platform is a little wanky sometimes.
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how can we dance while the earth is churning
how do we mourn as our beds are burning
how do we grieve in pulverized death
where our child, our culture taste the dust
of that death?
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Thanks, Jim. This elegy is very moving…
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“I would like to linger in a self before this knowledge”
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What a beautiful line. Thanks, Jan!
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