The image is from a garden built out of tear gas canisters in Bil’in, Palestine, in memorial of Bassem Abu Rahmeh, who was killed in 2009 when a tear gas canister struck him in the torso. Photo: Courtesy Brant Rosen.
Poem: Resurrection?
'On soil made sterile by history...'
On soil made sterile by history
tear gas canisters spent
but with the sickly smell of death
here where once a garden
bloomed.
She remembers sunlight on olive trees
torn down, grubbed up,
chants of triumph, the shriek of missiles.
A pain buries deep like a worm
In her skull.
One by one she gathers the canisters.
Still within the soil, she hopes,
some grain of life. She fills the shells.
She plants. Each relic a grave
for seeds.
She lines up the shells.
She waits for growth.
Each casing, a bed for
flowering. Unless the seed die.
Resurrection?
