Dear Jim, it’s been going downhill since you died
and there’s no end to it. You used to say, and you knew for sure,
“The Palestinians have an essential sweetness,” and I saw that too
when I was there, and how
in spite of terrible provocation
they relied on demonstrations and stones
it’s not that they lacked guns
or the ability to make rockets, or any ability –
“the most highly educated of all the Arab peoples” –
Oh Jim, there are some who are killing each other, now,
the numbers are statistically small
compared to the rate the Israelis are killing them
but even so, and the world’s governments who turned their backs
when it was a few stones have clamped down, there is no aid,
and they are living in candlelight and the schools are closed
and there have not been wages for months, for anyone.
How many women gave birth at the checkpoint in Rafa?
Was it almost seventy? And the man
who wanted to die at home, driven by ambulance,
was stopped, kept till he died.
All that grief, all these stories.
Jim since you died the wall
has been extended, it cuts through the land, through olive groves
and even a schoolground, and this week they began
digging under the Temple Mount “to repair a ramp”-
on a Friday, what could they expect? I was there
at that first massacre, the schoolchildren
hid in the mosque, the ambulances
fired on – “this is the first time it ever happened,
the first time in history.” Jim, it’s so common now
no one winks an eye. Journalists as well as nurses.
And all the innocent. Maybe it’s better you do not know
but you could have waited it out given another trace
in your cells, you could have grinned
that pragmatic, somewhat sarcastic smile (you were no romantic,
you just wanted justice) and gone on working.
I wish I was good with that kind of simplicity.
You got some things done.
You are missed. My heart misses you.
