On my listserve, someone posts her fears
that the pairs of eclipse glasses she ordered
will not arrive in time. A neighbor shares a link
from NASA on how to make a pinhole camera.
In the news, I read about Palestinians detained
outside an Israeli military base. They were given
numbers and lost their names. A doctor said
the men are chained day and night, blindfolded
at all times, hands bound behind their backs,
fed through straws. Forced to wear diapers,
dehumanized. Bound to a fence for prolonged
times, consecutive days. Because of the injuries
caused by the shackles, the doctor performs
“routine amputations” of their legs. At church
this morning, after our group’s discussion
of the Sunday readings, a woman talks about
how good God is to her family and he knows
what’s best for us. How can she say this,
I think, remembering Ivan Karamazov,
“The Grand Inquisitor.” Why would God
permit such suffering in the world?
The Israeli Defense Force official replied
that every procedure is within the framework
of the Law and is done with “extreme care
for the human dignity of the detainees.”
All day, the wind’s unrest builds and disperses
clouds as I try to make sense of such cruelty.
Bonnie Naradzay's manuscript will be published by Slant Books this year. She leads weekly poetry sessions at day shelters for homeless people and at a retirement center, all in Washington DC. Three times nominated for a Pushcart, her poems have appeared in AGNI, New Letters, RHINO, Kenyon Review, Tampa Review, EPOCH, Split This Rock, Dappled Things, and other sites. In 2010 she won the University of New Orleans Poetry Prize—a month’s stay in the South Tyrol castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter, Mary; there, she had tea with Mary, hiked the Dolomites, and read Pound’s early poems.