There’s a victory parade on Broadway for the
glorious heroes: routers of the Middle Eastern devil.
And tucked away in the corner of the paper is a picture
of a woman from that demonic country: her piercing eyes
bore into God’s focused lens, from her hands she offers
her shriveled-up child as he swallows up the scene
with silence and an abbreviated gesture.
In small print, the headline reads:
A helpless Iraqi mother bears the corpse of her dead baby.















From Hebrew: Ammiel Alcalay
Keys to the Garden, New Israeli Writing
Edited by Ammiel Alcalay
City lights Books
San Francisco, 1996