Vox Populi
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Alison Luterman: At First
At first it was that the hostages looked like kinfolk,
their curly hair, dark eyes always saying
three things at once, their smiles
with that undercurrent of anxiety bubbling beneath.
It’s that I placed myself among them.
My people, famously stubborn, yes, stiff-necked survivors
slogging through history as sandal-shod refugees,
wagon-pullers, chicken farmers, Torah scholars,
people of ten thousand opinions. At first it was that,
because family is the cauldron I was cooked in, Jerusalem
the direction I was taught to turn my heart.
Then it was my friend who called me, sobbing,
“Why does the world hate us?” or my other friend
who wailed “Where does this end?” or the stone
in my own heart, heavy, never to be dislodged.
Some stone I’d been carrying for thousands of years.
But as the days bled into each other and I bore helpless witness
to the plagues rained down in my name on those we called other,
when I saw that the soft bodies of children were the battleground,
the stone began to burn with rage and then shame,
because suffering does not ennoble,
and every people has been chosen,
and Jerusalem is a crossroads and a crucible
and a test of humanity we have thus far failed to pass.
~~~~
Alison Luterman is a poet, playwright and teacher who lives in Oakland, California. Her books include In the Time of Great Fires (Catamaran, 2020).
Copyright 2025 Alison Luterman
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Thank you for this poem and its honesty and its plea.
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A really fine poem that manages to be personal, historical, and political all at once. Besides, of course, being well-written.
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I agree, Bob!
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Every people has been chosen.
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By the end of the poem, the poet recognizes the suffering of other people, especially children who are innocent victims of politics and geography.
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This poem is so well written, so well crafted, that it transmits all the colours of pain, fear, apprehension. But more than that, it tells us with an aching beauty the extremes of inhumanity. The danger when you change ‘the other’ into less than human so that ‘the other’ becomes more like a plague that has to be eliminated. The cruelty we are capable of leaves me stunned.
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Stunned by our cruelty…. Yes
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Chills. Amazing poem.
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Yes it is.
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I started to write so much, but it all felt superfluous to the soft bodies of children. Thank you
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Today there are many battlegrounds, but the soft bodies of children are the most fragile and blameless of targets. To slaughter them is shameful terrorism, whichever side or person does it.
The form of the poem with the quatrains and individual lines between, sets a course for my understanding. Not only teaching a stone to talk, but letting it rage and feel shame as if it were human, amidst beliefs and traditions that sometimes go astray.
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Yes, we have failed this test of humanity so miserably and Alison once again captures it so well – ‘the soft bodies of children were the battleground’ speaks volumes. I weep with and for all of us. Thank you Alison, and Michael for bringing us this poem.
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Thanks, Jan. I can tolerate a lot of nonsense from politicians, but I draw the line at murdering children in order to make a point.
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