Pramila Venkateswaran
Elegy for the Flora and Fauna of Gaza
I don’t remember the day I became aware
of myself as separate from you
but always looked toward you even
if I was far away.
The snow remembers the earth
remembers the tree remembers the clouds,
the rain the sky the lake by the house and I.
When hearts are unrelenting,
I recall people struggling through the annals
of history to love their land and protect it.
When my sadness digs deep into my dreams,
I send out wishes like feathers to the dying,
the starving, and the fleeing, their shoes,
shirts, and cups left behind.
Who will write their elegies? Sing their eulogies?
The sky is a deep blue. The Mediterranean
is quiet. The world’s protest is a hum.
My people who sing hymns of exile
don’t want to drive out our neighbors,
for we remember the pain of the soul
stretched out of the body
and its longing to return to its salt.
“I am concerned about the severe loss of animal, plant, and insect life, in addition to human life, in wars between countries. In the current genocide in Gaza, there is not much attention paid to the devastation of flora and fauna which agonizes witnesses wherever they are. One of the witnesses in the poem is in Israel and has arrived there from a different country and is deeply affected by the wounding of the land. Borders do not diminish the agony one feels at seeing the utter destruction of all life. Violence manufactured by governments devastates our planet.” —Pramila Venkateswaran
Pramila Venkateswaran, President of NOW Suffolk, poet laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island (2013-15), and co-director of Matwaala: South Asian Diaspora Poetry Festival, is the author of many poetry volumes, the most recent being We Are Not a Museum (Finishing Line Press, 2022), winner of New York Book Festival award. Her forthcoming books are Exile is Not a Foreign Word (Copper Coin, 2024) and Tamil Dalit Feminist Poetics (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024).