Sifting Beloved

 

The juggernauts continue their rapacious consumption,

Cooly reducing neighborhoods to shattered enclaves,

An aftermath of a normalcy of murder and mayhem,

Yonder, violent land theft pogroms accelerate grimly.

In Gaza's rubble, days of shelterless surviving or dying.

Western powers play at outrage, none act to condemn.

This merciless avarice bulldozing miles of mass grave.

Erasing homes and holy sites in a zionist subsumption, 

Of their place on earth.

Sifting beloved,

Sifting beloved,

Sifting.

Bereaved Mahmoud Hammad,

Beloved wife, Naama Alaa Al-Din,

Was soon to birth beautiful daughter, Haifa, 

Consumed by thermal munitions.

Burned alive into ash as well,

Son Ismail, named for the faith that God will hear,

Son Mohammed, named for the prophet, 

Son Ghaith, the rain that brings mercy,

Daughter, Jana, God's gift to Mahmoud and Naama. *

Mahmoud our brother, bearing this unfathomable grief,

While fat-boy politicians drool over this holy ground,

Where blood stains and human and concrete ashes settle,

For this honorable one, an archeology of desperate quiet,

Cherishing his lost loves, displacing fathoms of rubble.

With what Allah gave him,  hands, back, and firm mettle,

Shovel, sieve, and sorrow, searching soil for his unfound,

Fragments of family, bone and dust and persistent belief,

In their sacred worth.

Sifting beloved,

Sifting beloved,

Sifting.

"Strengthen the feeble hands,

    steady the knees that give way;

 say to those with fearful hearts,

    “Be strong, do not fear;

your God will come,

    he will come with vengeance;

with divine retribution

    he will come to save you.” (Is. 35)

* I looked up the meaning of Mahmoud's family member names in Arabic. Mahmoud's name itself refers to honor and worth, which I use in the next stanza.