3 poems by CS Venable

First They Came, An Elegy for Hind Rajab

"Six-year-old Hind Rajab spent three hours on the phone with Palestinian emergency services, crying for help, stranded in a car under Israeli fire in Gaza. Her relatives were killed while trying to escape. Twelve days later, she was found dead. What happened after Hind’s phone line went dark?" - Al Jazeerah, February 19th, 2024

Come take me. You will come and take me.

They came in a cloud of dust.
They took her sister. They took her parents.
But the soldiers, they did not take her.

Come take me. You will come and take me.

They came resplendent in red and white.
Wedding dresses stained with blood.
In the silence that followed the dust, 

They came as constellations.
They took the casings and the shells,
But the medics, they could not take her. 

Come take me. You will come and take me.

They came in black veils of mourning,
At that time of the night when the moon
And the stars yield to the darkness;

They came with a length of bent rebar
Resting on their shoulder. Their scythe
Confiscated at the last armed checkpoint. 

They came to what remained of the car, 
And They said to the little girl, 
"Come, Hind, I have come to take you."

Then they came, and there was no one left.




 
The Fig Tree

"‘The war will end’: Remembering Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine’s poetic voice
Mahmoud Darwish’s poems are ever relevant to the conditions of Palestinians, particularly now in Gaza." - Al Jazeerah, March 13th, 2024, by Indlieb Farazi Saber

When the fig tree wilted
At Christ's cursed hunger,
Still, the land felt its roots. 
It would leave a scar 
Upon the soil until worms
Made a meal of it,
But the land, the land 
Would forever remember 
Something taken from it 
That it would never get back.

This was not the first of many
Scars left by the God of Israel,
But it was the first He dared
To wring out upon us in person.

Do you think, Jesus, the Christ,
Looked upon that wilted tree
And realized what he had done?

How a single word from his lips
Could spell the end of a life.

His father, how many lives 
Had he ended, with neither
Fire nor flood nor famine,
But with His words to his people? 
His voice, like flames, a burning bush.

Even His messages of freedom
Came to them like this—
A blackened scar on our land.




 
The Impossibility of Life

"Does Israel twist humanitarian law to justify Gaza carnage? Israel aims for the “impossibility to continue civil life in Gaza,” as UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese tells host Steve Clemons." - Al Jazeera, April 11th, 2024

How does it feel to be a dandelion? 

The children and the poets, they love you,
But they do nothing to protect you 

As the men in boots crush you under foot,
As the men in uniform dig up your roots.
Your body, like so many others, 
Will be piled atop your kin and burned. 

All the while, there will be songs 
Sung in your name and flowers
Painted in your likeness, but not you,

You will not be there to see it, 
You will not be there to see your smile
Blossom into a thousand wishes.

That will not stop them from imagining it,
And when they imagine it, 
They will curl their lips like a kiss, 
And they will blow:
Imaginary seeds; imaginary wishes. 
When all these settle to the ground,

The poets will have moved on to the next genocide,
And the men in boots will still stand on your soil, 
To ensure that no weeds ever grow here again. 

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