Beautiful Christmas tree decoration from Poland
Yesterday was International Human Rights Day and a friend sent me the following poem which moved me to tears.
Summer (’16)
BY RACHEL TZVIA BACKThe cyclamens have a hard time
breathing in July.The sun ravages them and earth
is too dry.Still, try remembering March light
and the tightdeep-buried bulbs that somehow
do not die.2
The children are scattered
like weeds.The children are scattered dust-colored
dirt-coveredlike weeds. Mid-summer grey reigns,
and rainexists not even in memory, here where children
dressed allin debris peer out from under slabs of
jagged stones,bombed homes, mountains or ruined
thronesthey may have climbed, small kings and
queensof imagined realms, smoothest pebbles
in small palms theircaressed totems and favorite songs as they
would have climbedhere where now they half-buried lie, small bodies
crushed by pitched-blackweight, there they wait, to be pulled out from
under the remainsof broken town, mangled concrete, piled-up stones,
bones, dust clouds andshrouds, on the children who are
scattered nowacross the whole countryside
like weeds.3
At the edge of another summer.
At the edge of a fallow field.
At the edge of day.Waiting
For last light of dusk
To call all the children
Home.A Note from the Editor
Today is International Human Rights Day.
