Middle East 4 ChangeYour Village
Poem by Elena Bell
Once in a village that is burning
because a village is always somewhere burning
And if you do not look because it is not your village
it is still your village
In that village is a hollow child
You drown when he looks at you with his black, black eyes
And if you do not cry because he is not your child
he is still your child
All the animals that could run away have run away
The trapped ones make an orchestra of their hunger
The houses are ruin Nothing grows in the garden
The grandfather’s grave is there A small stone
under the shade of a charred oak Who will brush off the dead
leaves Who will call his name for morning prayer
Where will they — the ones who slept in this house and ate from this dirt –
a village always, somewhere burning?
From: Moving traditions October 9, 2023
Listen to Elana Bell perform the poem here
Featured image: Cars and homes are torched by settlers in the West Bank town of Huwara on February 26, 2023 (from Times of Israel)
Elena Bell
Elana Bell’s debut collection of poetry, Eyes, Stones, was selected by Fanny Howe as the winner of the 2011 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, and brings her complex heritage as the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors to consider the difficult question of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Her second book of poems, Mother Country, is forthcoming from BOA Editions in 2020. Elana is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Jerome Foundation, the Edward Albee Foundation, and the Brooklyn Arts Council. Her writing has appeared in many journals, including AGNI, Harvard Review, and The Massachusetts Review. Elana teaches poetry to actors at the Juilliard School, and sings with the Resistance Revival Chorus, a group of women activists and musicians committed to bringing joy and song to the resistance movement. For more, please visit her website.