It is not eloquent or easy to read. There is nothing about it that should be easy to digest, that is exactly why it should be read. In memory of both the oppressed and the oppressor... we have to believe that there is liberation and renewal for both. Christ, we ask for amazement, energy, and redemption for both the Israelis and the Palestinians.

***

Jean Stewart
El Sobrante, CA
©2008


"I wrote this poem partly in response to the Israeli policy of home demolition by bulldozer.
Palestinian families whose homes are targeted for destruction are notified by loudspeaker.
Sometimes they’re given barely half an hour to carry out their belongings and vacate their
homes. Many elderly and disabled Palestinians have been buried in the rubble of their homes
because they could not, or would not, leave.
I also wrote the poem in response to the many incidents in which pregnant Palestinian women
have attempted to make it to hospital, only to be stopped at checkpoint by Israeli soldiers who
refuse to let them pass, forcing them to either turn around and drive home or give birth at
checkpoint. In either case, these births take place under circumstances of extreme stress and
danger, without medical assistance, with sometimes disastrous consequences.
Both of these scenarios—women giving birth “in extremis” and Palestinian families made
homeless when their houses are demolished—have become commonplace in Palestine. In my
mind I’ve tended to view them as two separate—though obviously related—narratives, but
recently it occurred to me that somewhere in Gaza or Jenin or elsewhere in Palestine, the two
horrific scenarios are bound to converge, if they have not already."


THE CHOICE


“I ask you youngest citizens to believe the evidence of your eyes. You have seen that life is fragile, and evil is real, and courage triumphs. Make the choice to serve in a cause larger than your wants, larger than yourself, and in your days you will add not just to the wealth of your country but to its character." -- George W. Bush

In Palestine the about-to-be
firstborn of a twenty two year old
woman roils and churns in amniotic
unease his journey having
hit a snag when checkpoint
soldiers deny his parents passage
thwarting all thought of
hospital birth.
They turn and drive home.
Not yet a citizen of
the human world he doesn’t
see how his mother’s sweat
wets the sheets glues brown hair to cheeks
nor how his father hovers: Love I’m here
Don’t cry Doesn’t hear what
his father now hears: the tanks.
If he were a born boy he’d see his father
turn on the television
2
loud slip from the room to race
outdoors arms aloft pleading
No stop my wife—
while she
grips the mattress, arching her back.
He’d see his mother lost
in labor oblivious to
loudspeaker
gunfire tanks
She wails stops wails
Her brown eyes fix
on the American who sits
at his desk amidst marvelous order—
just a few papers in one neat stack—squinting
back at her and speaking. The camera moves
outdoors to gaze at the White House
shimmering in sun. Presidential words
vibrate glinting like tossed coins.
Courage triumphs
Look Hassan! Such green green
grass!
Serve in a cause
And flowers! Hassan let’s plant—
In those moments just as
her body loses itself in a wild red
flowering of flesh
he the unseeing
the neverborn
he of the tiny
bulldozed bud of a heart
makes his choice
and will carry it
will carry it
will carry it on.