Protest poetry

From the translation of With An Iron Pen, an Israeli collection of 99 poems by 45 Israeli writers protesting the occupation of Arab lands in West Bank and Gaza. The English translation of the book has yet to find a publisher.

Retinal Tear
by Dvora Amir

"All people are the same in their nakedness, as are houses when they become heaps of rubble."*

One could feel there the atmosphere of just before something terrifying.
A heavy engine inserted a blast into the earth.
Into my widened pupils a house collapsed,
crumbled, landing in the eye's depths.
A puzzle of frozen dryness, as on the bottom of a dying lake,
was etched into my eyes. "Retinal tear," you said,
and I know, there are some sights for which there is no repair;
an armless old man flapping his empty sleeves toward his face,
a girl looking for her notebook in the ruins.
And later, the curses of women who were torn from the walls of their home
drilled into my eye-socket, and you told me,
whoever scars a person's home--in the end his eyes will be scarred,
whoever demolishes a person's home--in the end his soul will be demolished.

Translated by Rachel Tzvia Back

*Written by Olga Friedberg in the ruins of Leningrad under siege.