TALKING ABOUT TREES

by Bonnie Naradzay

 

 

Father of Baby Shot Dead by IDF in Hebron: I Stopped When Asked, Then They Opened Fire. 'The soldier was about ten meters away from me. He saw me, he saw my wife and the children. The car windows were not dark, it was daylight and everything was clear. You can't say he didn't see that it was a family,' Fahed Abu Haykal told Haaretz, June 6, 2026.
 

I’d like to write like Tu Fu, whose poems
are like branches of trees reflected in water –
 
the branches of trees.  Like a group of trees seen
through clouds or mist, they appear, then disappear.
 
But I learned that today Israeli forces murdered
a Palestinian baby, in the West Bank, in Hebron.
 
He was in his mother’s arms, in a car the soldiers
shot into. They’d ordered the driver, the baby’s father,
 
to stop, and he did as they said, and raised his hands
in submission. The baby’s mother sustained shrapnel
 
injuries near her heart, may not survive.  The soldiers
had been standing idly in the street. After firing
 
into the car, they walked unconcernedly away from
their carnage. Today in Gaza City, Israelis aimed
 
a drone at the Jawazat camp for people who’d been
displaced. The drone killed seven, wounded 15 others. 
 
How can I honor the lives of Palestinians?  Like a group
of olive trees, they are destroyed and made to disappear.


Bonnie Naradzay is the author of Invited to the Feast (Slant Books, 2025). Her poems have appeared in AGNI, The American Journal of Poetry, Birmingham Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, The Georgia Review, Cumberland River Review, Dappled Things, New Letters, Poet Lore, Rhino, Innisfree, and many other journals.  While at Harvard University’ graduate program, she was in Robert Lowell’s class on “The King James Bible as English Poetry.”  She was a winner of the University of New Orleans Poetry Prize (a month’s stay in the South Tyrol castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter Mary). Three of her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart prize. She is a 2017 graduate of the St John’s College Graduate Institute. She has led poetry classes at the DC Women’s Jail and currently leads weekly poetry sessions at Street Sense and at a retirement community both in Washington, DC.   

AGNUS DEI

by Steve Bloom

Inspired by the poem “Agnus Dei” by Edna Shochat, Boise Idaho. Some elements taken directly from that poem with permission.

Religious Zionism will appoint lawmaker Orit Strock as Israel’s first National Missions Minister… Orit Strock is a leading figure in Hebron’s Jewish community and the founding chairwoman of the Human Rights Organization of Judea and Samaria, a controversial settlement group. Her son, Zvi, previously received a 2.5-year sentence for kidnapping and abusing a Palestinian boy. -Haaretz, December 7, 2022

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.

Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. 

Oh, newborn lamb!

But this time you are not the lamb of God.
No, this time you are merely the lamb
of a young shepherd tending his flock
in the hills of Hebron, born
on this Spring Day in 2007.
Only hours after you emerge from the womb
an armed man—named Zvi Strock—
enters your life, enters 
as the angel of your death.
First he captures, blindfolds
your 15-year-old shepherd, tortures him
to the edge of extinction, then 
turns his rage on you,
kicking you repeatedly until
nothing remains—except your remains.

Oh, newborn lamb!
Even in a lifespan of less
than a day you find a way
to take this measure of the evil 
that lurks in our world 

And so you do not see when, 
on his way to serving
a prison sentence of 18 months,
Zvi is toasted as a great hero 
at a “send-off party” organized
by Rabbi Chaim Druckman,
spiritual leader of the religious
Zionist right. I 
would have told you then, 
in the year 2010, 
that Rabbi Druckman 
and his political movement, 
were part of a far-right fringe. 

Oh, newborn lamb!
(Still and forever a newborn lamb)
I hope you rest in peace today,
though I do not when Orit Strock, 
Zvi's mother takes her post 
along with others who are 
of Rabbi Druckman's political persuasion
as ministers in the new Israeli ruling coalition,
and it dawns on some of us (at least) that those 
who hail Zvi Strock as a national hero
can be called a right-wing fringe no longer.
Today, instead, they take the power,
planning to organize something bigger 
than a send-off party for a young man
on his way to prison, kick the life 
out of more than just a newborn lamb.

Agnus Dei, miserere nobis. 
Lamb of God have mercy upon us. 

Steve Bloom is a New York City based poet, composer, and activist. He is the curator of the "Poetry of Protest and Struggle" videos that appear three times a year.