NEW YEAR'S EVE IN GAZA

by Donna Katzin

Part of the humanitarian zone, around Al-Aqsa University, west of Khan Yunis. February 2024, compared to December 2024. Credit: Planet Labs PBC via Haaretz, December 31, 2024

There is no shelter to keep out the cold                                     

in Deir al-Balah—no water

safe to drink or mouthfuls of food…

famine claims the children one by one,

even infants who, though barely named,

are loved.

 

Winter winds do not appear to notice,

rip through shreds of plastic

pretending to be tents,                                       

that can no longer hold together

as unspoken words and stifled prayers

stab at throats too dry to utter them.

 

Without knocking, rain pours through the openings,

soaks clothes and bedding to the skin

for days and nights that never close their eyes,

like a lethal benediction

claiming tiny souls of unblessed babies

freezing in their mothers’ arms.

 

A world away, one million revel in Times Square 

awash in bright lights and bubbly 

on the eve of the New Year.

 

 

Donna Katzin is founding and former Executive Director of Shared Interest, investing in South Africa's democratic development, and co-coordinator of Tipitapa Partners, working with Nicaraguan mothers to feed their children.  She is also a member of the Reconstructionist Movement's Tikkun Olam (Repair the World) Commission, and a published poet honored to have been included in The New Verse News.

JERUSALEM LAMENTS

by Greg Friedman

William Blake, The Emanation of The Giant Albion, Object 41 detail from “Jerusalem” 1804 to 1820

From the south I hear their cries: 

David, 

Wala’a, 

Yochered, 

Aya, 

       Oded, 

      Muhammad. 

They call from the tunnels, 

the dead unburied 

from beneath the ruined hospital 

    where mothers search  

    in the dust for the lost. 

From the north I witness the terror, 

from the south I suffer the terror, 

with my sons I bear the terror, 

with my daughters I carry the terror, 

the whistle of the anonymous messengers, 

raining their sentence of vengeance: 

alarm across the city, 

dread beyond the border, 

anger unchecked by reason, 

retribution fueling the advance, 

memories etched in blood staining 

my land gifted, 

inheritance claimed, 

my land usurped, 

inheritance ignored— 

my land where only the stones now cry 

to me its mother.  

I hear them from captivity,  

I hear them from subjugation, 

I hear them from internment, 

I hear them  

from Nasser Hospital, 

from Kibbutz Nir Oz, 

from Deir al-Balah, 

from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, 

from the shrines sacred to my children, 

from mountain, mosque, temple, basilica, 

from the holy rock, 

from Herod’s enduring walls, 

from the ancient sepulcher, 

from the sudden sepulchers of rubble, 

from the entombing walls of Gaza City. 

 

I hear them all 

from mountain, mosque, temple, basilica, 

ancient in my mourning, 

young in my anguish, 

vigilant for their outcry, 

I wait for the silence, 

I despair for the peace, 

I remember and watch and listen. 

Greg Friedman is a Franciscan Friar who travels frequently to the Middle East, leading pilgrims. He has been a magazine editor, radio host and pastor.