“sorrow, hard as the earth, sheer, present as the sea”

——

Russia fired a wave of air strikes across eastern Ukraine last night, killing four—including three toddlers—in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Bohodukhiv. A Russian drone struck their house as part of a broader strike on the area that also injured two people, including a pregnant woman. The night before, in the eastern Ukrainian city of Slovyansk, a Russian aerial assault killed two other people, an 11-year-old girl and her mother, and injured at least 16 others, including a 7-year-old child.

——

Omar El Akkad:

An eighteen-month-old with a bullet wound to the forehead. Maybe the sniper was aiming elsewhere. Maybe there’s some explanation. Maybe it was necessary.

——

Madeleine L’Engle (an entire poem not easily quotable):

And a second time he spoke
when the Lord kept the children beside him
and suffered them not to be taken away:
“These are the ones that are left us,
but where, Lord, is the Kingdom of Heaven?
Where, Lord, are the others?
What of them? What of them?”
And he wept.

——

Headlines and stories regularly beg the question: are we Les Murray’s “fellow crying in Martin Place” or somewhere in the crowd? Do we fear the all-acceptance, or will we receive the gift?

… the hollow he makes about him
in the midday light, in his pentagram of sorrow,
and uniforms back in the crowd who tried to seize him
stare out at him, and feel, with amazement, their minds
longing for tears as children for a rainbow.

[…]

… the slickest wit amongst us

trembles with silence, and burns with unexpected
judgements of peace. Some in the concourse scream
who thought themselves happy. Only the smallest children
and such as look out of Paradise come near him
and sit at his feet, with dogs and dusty pigeons.

Ridiculous, says a man near me, and stops
his mouth with his hands, as if it uttered vomit — 
and I see a woman, shining, stretch her hand
and shake as she receives the gift of weeping;
as many as follow her also receive it

and many weep for sheer acceptance, and more
refuse to weep for fear of all acceptance,
but the weeping man, like the earth, requires nothing,
the man who weeps ignores us, and cries out
of his writhen face and ordinary body

not words, but grief, not messages, but sorrow,
hard as the earth, sheer, present as the sea —
and when he stops, he simply walks between us
mopping his face with the dignity of one
man who has wept, and now has finished weeping.

Evading believers, he hurries off down Pitt Street.

——

(Still, still, still, still not for me.)