Since October 7th, life has a been a rollercoaster in many ways. For a long time, I could not read a book, could not focus long enough to read more than a page, could not do something so trivial or that could possibly be enjoyable when there had been so much horror and heartbreak.
While bibliotherapy has gained credence in recent years, librarians have always known the serendipity of reading the right book at the right time. The same is true for poetry.
During this phase, these words were a comfort:
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free
-- Wendell Berry
As I attended more and more funerals and the cemetery started filling up, I remembered the poem I had to memorize in junior high school:
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset flow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders Fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.
-- John McCrae
I was also reminded of a poem written by my father, Edward Schapiro, who was a sergeant in the United States Army and served in the Detachment 12 Weather Squadron. He wrote it in 1945, after World War II ended.
They say that time is kind, those fools who sit
And wait to die, who never climb the sky
Or touch the glowing stars with magic lit
And watch unmoved the rushing years go by.
They say that love's a flame whose burn is slight
And quickly heals before the press of days,
Who never shared with you the star swept night
And knew the fiery heat the heart can blaze.
They say that passion gives the tortured heart
A dearer fondness when the loved on is far,
Who never spent the hours from you apart.
Playing a crazy manmade game called war,
They say these things, a smirk of wisdom in their eye,
And all that I can say is this:
Damn them! They lie!
Recently I heard about a song dedicated to the memory of Re'em Batito, who was killed on October 7th. As songs are poetry put to music, this beautiful tribute broke my heart yet again:
Besorot tovot,
May we hear good tidings soon!
