A Requiem for Palestine©

by Rev. Dr. Waltrina Middleton 

Is this how we must say goodbye?
With rugged walls between us?

Rolling hills no longer rove freely,
stopped abruptly by a myriad of check points
erected with blood stained concrete and unearthed boulders.

Steel memorials
Armored adolescents with guns 
Barbed wires
Sharp shooters spewing profanity with trigger finger ready 
Tell me, how does one wrap her arms around you to offer a proper embrace?

I cannot see you 
with the snaking partitions between us.
I leave graffiti clad letters 
proclaiming radical love 
for my people
declaring our humanity
and a dreamer’s prayer
filled with an audacious hope for freedom
for us
all of us…
This is my wailing wall.

Can you see me?
Can you really see me?
Or am I merely
hurled rocks 
dark and brown skin
burka, hijab and 
keffiyeh?

Surely you can hear us,
The lament of funeral processions. 
Fathers beating chests that should beat celebratory drums.

Mothers clinching breasts
That once consoled the wailing newborn.
Who will comfort her as the etched echoes of her child’s screams 
now haunts her restless nights?

Children have become ancestors too soon.
Ammunition shells,
rubber bullets
line their fragile, lifeless bodies.

Their innocent faces disfigured by tear gas inhaled like an incessant smoker’s snuff.
The land will reclaim their names
Even as a mass-propagandized world proclaims 
Small hands clutching rocks
are terrorists.
If these children are terrorists with rocks,
what then shall we call a militarized government that targets hospitals, school houses, media hubs, and pedestrian homes
without remorse?
What then shall we call the complicity of silence from onlookers who insist, “Israel has the right to defend itself”?
Who shall defend the children and come to their aid?
What rights belong to them?

Who now will offer the eulogy for the fallen?
The weeping mountains, the crying rocks, the barren valleys,  
or the mystified deserts?

The desert’s vibrant sundry of colors create a mural of children dancing
Washed away with the first gust of wind 
A cruel desert’s mirage banishes even the memories of yesterday’s tomorrow
Where is our hope for today in this war torn wasteland
Where sewage overflows into the streets
Garbage dumps become makeshift playgrounds.
So powerful a stench—
Your burnt offerings and incense cannot mask 
the rot behind the ruins?

Oh how I pray fervently for it to crumble
Let there be rubble
Emerging from the dust with a white flag hailing high!

Let righteous resistance dismantle the foundations of hate and racism 
All in the name of god.
Expose the imposters of an apartheid justice:
False prophets, politicians and patriots of an embellished state
Let the soil receive rain again
So the children can inherit 
Your majestic hills 
Pomegranates, olives, dates, avocadoes and beautiful terraces

Your holy mountains send down streams
To the river banks for baptisms
What a glorious backdrop for the Dead Sea
Rivaled only by your mosques, temples, synagogues and sacred indigenous altars
Oh how I thirst for the streams to quench my biting grief
Fill my cup with the healing balms from the land
The beauty of your tongues create diasporic annunciations and prophetic witness

How do I say goodbye to your righteous skies
Deep swirling lavender-indigo hues
Too often eclipsed by a rising smoke in the distance and the intrusion of tear gas
Overshadowed by heavy gunshots masquerading as festive fireworks
Hailing pirate patriotism

Oh how the skies illuminate nightly.
Where is our emancipation
Promised for the dawn’s light?

Shall we depart now and say our goodbyes
Heavy burdened by divides  
Is the call to prayer our wake?
Saturday’s march to the temple – our last hajj to Golgotha?

Shall we work for peace on our Sabbath? 
Or wail before a wall 
Deaf
Cold
Numb
Unmoved by our sanctified rituals
Which is the greater sin?
Even Baal rejects our empty offerings
As we build ramparts higher than the Tower of Babel.

Some could not say goodbye.
In the cover of the night, there arose a wall
And the stones of hand-built homes relegated to dust.
Unable to touch the land for which their hearts hold the keys
Shut off from their mother’s tombs
Distanced from their father’s wells
Removed from their olive groves
Disinherited from the holy places where prophets prayed and read from scrolls.

Goodbye?
What a privilege
a gift
a right
a freedom
to say 
goodbye.

Even if I never cast eyes upon you, for now, Mother Palestine; 
I hold the keys around my neck 
for the doors to return—
home.

This poem was inspired by the author’s visit to historic state of Palestine, illegally occupied by Israel. It was presented as a part of a peace forum at The Carter Center in Atlanta, GA.

Photo credit to Waltrina N. Middleton with personal photos.

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