This piece is part of our Witnessing series, which shares pieces from Israeli authors and authors in Israel, as well as the experiences of Jewish writers around the globe in the aftermath of October 7th.
It is critical to understand history not just through the books that will be written later, but also through the first-hand testimonies and real-time accounting of events as they occur. At Jewish Book Council, we understand the value of these written testimonials and of sharing these individual experiences. It’s more important now than ever to give space to these voices and narratives.
A Belief in Order
My daughter returned
to bring music to a stunned
country. Her orchestra strains
in every note — the echoes
of halls once over-filled, once
Beethoven’s tympanied Fifth.
I wanted to tell her be safe,
stay here. I’m sure she knew all
I didn’t say. If I hear grenades,
she’s in their midst, a rally of
percussion, the clear voices
of a congregation of horns, flutes
that lure the frightened hoopoes
back to the banyons, the doves
to the eucalyptus, the strings’
every timbre seeking the Autumn
garden’s blue muscari, the field’s
scented white saffron-crocus—
their necessary music that heals. It
anticipates the wounds.
My Partisan Grief, SuperNova,
October 7, 2023, The Negev
These are my cousins.
I don’t know them. These
my sons, young lovers
and friends. I don’t know them.
Their musics fill the desert sky,
dancing to wed the Negev night.
Before dawn, the stars have fled. Those
watchful stars like angel eyes. Who?
silenced you, angels?
The light is old and bitter
breaks the dark these
sudden sparks start at rifle’s
mouth. Mouth to mouth
silenced. What unsilenced rage
wrangles through ranging
hearts? Not glinted stars these
quicker knives quickening life-
exits.
What music now, here
in the vast and unforgiving desert, those
vast and unforgiving rocks, this
vast and unforgiving grief.
These, my cousins, these, my sons.
The views and opinions expressed above are those of the author, based on their observations and experiences.
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Owen Lewis is the author of three collections of poetry and three chapbooks, mostly recently “Knock-knock”. His prior collection “Field Light” was a “must read” selection of the New England Book Awards. Honors include the 2024 E.E.Cummings Prize, the 2023 Guernsey International Poetry Prize, the 2023 Rumi Prize for Poetry, the International Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine, and the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award. At Columbia University he is Professor of Psychiatry in the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics and teaches Narrative Medicine.
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