In those days people will no longer say,

      “The fathers have eaten sour grapes,

       and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”

                                         – Jeremiah 31:29

 

The Gaza shoemaker stitches soles on an ancient

foot-treadle sewing machine.  His tiny shop, crammed

with dusty foot-wear, is wedged between a butcher’s

and a leather merchant’s.  He never demonstrates;

doesn’t even attend funerals.  I’m not political, he says,

just trying to make a living. I wish harm to no one.

 

He spots the black curls of his dark-eyed son.

The six-year old sits beneath the whirring machine,

making carts and sailboats from leather scraps.

Rukh.  Go!  Play outside.  The boy goes to play.

Sails his boats in the gutter.

 

The father patiently repairs peasants’ shoes;

Cutting, stitching, hammering on a last,

makes a rare pair for a rich patron,

or a left shoe for a customer missing a leg.

 

Shouts from the street call to the shoemaker

to fetch his son,  lying in the wet gutter

up the block  amid pieces of leather.

 

Teenagers threw cobble stones.

Soldiers fired.  The shoemaker runs.

 

A rubber bullet glancing off a lamppost

ripped though the child’s thin throat.

The shoemaker wails; his face

contorted, the limp corpse of his son

draped across his blood-streaked arms.

He staggers blindly down the street.

 

     Film clip of Arab carrying dead child

     on street in Gaza on CNN.

     Headlines at ten.