Sharing Sorrow through Laments
Poetry of Everyday Life Blogpost #27
Produced in collaboration with Voices: Journal of New York Folklore
Edited by Martha Dahlen
How can we respond to the unimaginable? Following the events of October 7th and its aftermath, Bob Holman and I struggled to conceive a response. City Lore and Bowery Arts have been working together on a project called Across the Great Divide, seeking to build bridges between liberals and conservatives. The conflict unfolding in the Middle East exposed a new set of fault lines, a new divide in America. In an instant our project changed from the singular to the plural – Across the Great Divides – from a mere juxtaposition of liberal and conservative views to something more: we have many Divides to cross, not just one.

That was when I heard from an old friend and collaborator, activist and Episcopal priest Kathleen Mandeville. Like City Lore and Bowery, Kathleen felt the need to do something. She told me, “Look, I’m here in the beautiful Hudson River Valley, my life is surrounded by beauty. And yet, over there, pure misery. For us as faith leaders, there’s an extraordinary feeling of helplessness now. It’s a terrifying situation. However, this is exactly where I as a faith leader need to be in some way: I need to respond… I believe that there’s a place of hope within the hopelessness and harm that we navigate as humans.
Kathleen told me about the Reverend Canon Sarah Snyder, who has served as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Canon for Reconciliation and works in places of conflict around the world including Israel and Gaza. Reverend Snyder asked her fellow clergy on a Zoom call to express their grief about the Middle East in the sacred tradition of Lament, as spoken through the Psalms. The Psalms express collective and individual grief about injustice in the world. As the poet Ed Hirsch writes in Poet’s Glossary, “the poetry of lamentation seems to exist in all languages and poetries.” It appears in ancient Egyptian, Hebrew, Chinese, Sanskrit, Zulu, and in the Hindu Vedas, among others.

Kathleen, who was on the call with Reverend Snyder, put out a challenge—an opportunity– for people reading her Outer Edge coaching newsletter to write their own Laments. She defined a lament as a “visceral, heartbreaking cry.”
We were touched by this initiative, and extended the call for Laments to our members and friends. City Lore and The Outer Edge began collaborating with a vision to create “a global archive of witness navigating this historical and volatile moment.”
We thought that perhaps this project might be a way to convert fundamental, soul-destroying anguish into a rallying call for compassion. So often the pain of grief and loss brings forth a cry for revenge and retribution. President Biden showed timely wisdom, soon after the massacres, when he asked Israelis not to be “blinded by rage.” Perhaps a sharing of Laments can lead to a stretching of arms rather than fists across the great divide. Perhaps acknowledgment of the other side’s grief can restore sanity—indeed, humanity. The Persian saying above, “grief is a river that knows no shore,” speaks directly to the vast outpouring of grief that can never be contained – to the grief that spills over both sides of a conflict. Shared grief, perhaps, can unify.
Among the oldest Laments in human history, “The Lament for Sumer and Urim,” dates back to the ancient kingdom of Sumer, some 4,000 years ago. The Gods of Enlil, Enki, Utu, and Ninhursaja had decided the fate of those two ancient cities. Their divine plan was to obliterate Sumer, for Enki to alter the course of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and Utu to cast his curse on the roads and highways. In the wake of the horror, the people of both Sumer and Urim lamented, “Alas, the destroyed city, my destroyed house… The house was filled with lamentation, lamentation reeds grew… In its midst the people pass their days in sighing.”
Laments are often associated with the Psalms, specifically the Book of Psalms dating from the third century BC. Many of these are structured as appeals for divine help. They often include a description of the suffering that has befallen the mourners, a cry for divine intervention, a curse on enemies, and an ending song giving thanks.
An old friend Susan da Silva spotted a problem here, questioning the religious root of psalms and laments:
“The 23rd Psalm is beautiful and comforting. Surely it is being read at many funerals these days.
But Psalms are often about the glory of having God on your side so you can destroy your enemy. Yes, the attitudes behind the Psalms are part of the problem. Religion is part of the problem.
I’d like to see evidence of people looking more to their relationships with other people, than their relationships with God, checking their own actions and feelings for signs of spite. We all have to live with the present. Wanting revenge for past hurts got us to this terrible place. I feel helpless to change the world, but each one of us can start by correcting the injuries we may be causing and forgiving ourselves and others for past harms.

An Indian Buddhist tale tells the story of Kiságotamí and her quest for a mustard seed. Kisagotami has a baby who dies as a young child. In time, she gave birth to a son who died as a child. Bharatanatyam dancer and City Lore educator, Malini Srinivasan, continues this classic story:
Kiságotamí… goes to the Buddha, the enlightened one. She brings the body of her child to the Buddha and says, “Please bring my child back to me. I remember my baby still in my arms but now he is dead and gone. Bring him back!”
The Buddha says, “I can help you. I can see your suffering. But you must bring me one thing. Bring me one mustard seed from a house that has never experienced death.”
“One mustard seed, of course, no problem.”
And so Kiságotamí goes off in search of this mustard seed. From house to house she goes. At every house she is full of hope that she will find her mustard seed. Every time she knocks, someone opens the door. They listen to her story, feel for her but cannot give her a mustard seed because they too always have a story of death.
Those stories become heavier and heavier, they mount and mount becoming ever harder and harder to bear. Even so, she continues her search: after all, she needs just one mustard seed. But she just keeps hearing more stories– and with every story she feels more connected to all of the men, the women, the children that she has met who, like her, had experienced death of a loved one.
Her heart changes, her grief starts to feel lighter, until eventually she feels so light that she is able to take the body of her child and release it back to the earth. She returns to the Buddha, the one who is enlightened, and then joins him in the quest for enlightenment. (You can watch Malini telling this story through Bharatanatyam dance here.)
In this traditional tale, found in many different versions around the world, Kiságotamí is inducted into a community of mourners; she encounters neighbors who carry on despite devastating losses. She thus learns that it is indeed possible to endure, and that such endurance is the way of the world.
In the spirit of this tale, this story of shared sorrow, we at City Lore and Outer Edge continue to call for Laments from all sides and perspectives. After our first call, laments poured in; often we could not decipher which side the writer was from or with whom they sympathized. Many did not have titles, as if they were simply heartfelt cries rather than poems. The poet Christian Garaud was inspired to write this poem:
She is Israeli.
Her son is a hostage.
Tsahal has declared:
“O Gaza we will
Set your walls on fire”.
That’s the way men talk.
But the woman writes
To another woman
Who lives in Gaza
And who weeps like her:
“In our despair
tears have the same taste.”
The poet was inspired by Rachel Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli hostage mother who appeared at the 2024 Democratic Convention to plead for a ceasefire in Gaza. (Her son was subsequently found dead.)
From both sides, tears, like blood, coursed through the lines of the Laments, sharing grief and, equally ardently, a cry for peace. Their emotional resonance is powerful, transformative. Is it possible to transmute unimaginable grief, despair, hate and judgment into compassion? Perhaps we can begin to heal what divides us, starting with laments….
* * *
Here are some laments gathered by City Lore and Outer Edge. Our project is ongoing. If you are inspired to write a lament, please send it to poetry@citylore.org.
lament: an attempt
you whose name is known and unknown
where are you, why have you left us here
at the mercy and mercilessness of one another
you whose name we claim to know
we have forgotten: we are one, we are the other
you are with us across all closed borders
you are the one we call ally, enemy
you are the one dying in our arms
you are the one holding our brokenness
you whose name we cry out in every tongue
break us open not apart, quiet our clamor,
do not leave our hearts forsaken, heart of our hearts
~Elizabeth Cunningham
* * *
O My God: a Lament
(October 31, 2023, published in Stay Edgy)
O my God,
I am in a land of beauty with color and light,
Yet my human kin in Palestine and Israel are in a land of rubble and blood.
How shall we speak of this horror, our horror, your horror, O God?
My voice is throttled
with hands of hopelessness at my throat. I pour my tears into flowing waters:
May they reach the shores of Gaza. “To end a grief, we must save a life.”
~Kathleen Mandeville
* * *
My heart weeps a monsoon of tears for the massacred children of the Holy Land
Slaughtered Innocents who have no voice
At the mercy of elders who should protect them
Instead, betrayed, they lay lifeless
A testimony to hypocrisy of hearts deaf to compassion or reason
May we seek refuge in your perfect Light
By facing our Darkness and basest impulses
May we purge ourselves and embrace a higher octave
Dedicate our remaining days to ending this cycle of pain
To heal, restore and promote peace for generations to come
~Vincenza Dante
* *. *
My lament
as a woman
for women
for our life source
Mother Earth
she who is being blasted into
in Gaza
she whose olive trees destroyed
their soothing oil
annihilated
as children being buried
alive
whose fathers’ broken hearts
have forever been denied
enabling their gender’s automic military mindset
to be embedded, in brains, over eons
still unchanged
and so the cycle goes on
our self-imposed destruction
fueling anger and rage
over tears
tears over too many years
left to the women
to weep
and so they mean nothing
dismissed as emotion
so who cares?
apparently
too few
of us
and so shame on us
as whomever our god might be
turning in his grave
leaving us
numb
on this hallowed day
~Judith Asphar
* * *
Not a Lament, but Some Questions
It’s the children I can’t get out of my mind.
Children too young to identify as Jews or Muslims,
children who belong to the earth,
innocents slaughtered like some Old Testament horror story
(because, really, Abraham was totally down
with slitting Isaac’s throat).
Big, ugly men spewing death all over the planet.
We on the other side of the world
who grew up in suburbs
clipped lawns, flowerboxes
Houses that looked safe—
No bombs tearing us away from life—
our monsters were subtle.
The crazy mother
the drunk and violent father
the bullies the rapists.
Everywhere, innocence gets the short stick.
Everywhere children are caught in webs
spun by a world insane.
What good is our lament?
What can helplessness do?
How do we call out monsters
Without becoming monsters ourselves?
Isn’t this the perpetual question?
Do our prayers, our tears, make any difference at all?
Isn’t holding on to hope an act of crazy courage?
~Cait Johnson
* * *
Help, I cannot see!
No clarity, only ferocity.
The Holy Land erupts into hells
of Jew against Muslim, Gazan against Israeli, IMF against Hamas.
All explodes into dust, dissolves into ghost, descends into darkness.
Oh, how I wish for vision–
to make sense of the lives and deaths, so far away, demanding my attention now.
And when I find that wishing wears me out,
I wail, Help!
and hope that I am heard.
~Jack Maguire
* * *
_____________________________________
From David Budd’s lament:
I grasp at your coat to steady myself in the grief
and you have helped me remain on my feet
as we walk together in communion
We have no words as the news of the horrors
moves us beyond the beyond where one may express heartbreak
~David Budd
*. *. *
Who is the Man?
The high school student in me says,
Blow their brains out once and for all.
The college student in me says,
Learn Arabic and Hebrew, see both sides.
Both sides? My graduate student cries,
If only there were only two!
And writes poems of witty complexity.
And the grandfather in me
sings the kids to sleep with psalm 34:
Netzor leshoncha meira’ / Guard your tongue from evil/
U-sfatecha midaber mirma/ And your lips from speaking guile /
Sur meira v’aseh tov/ Turn away from evil and do good/
Bakesh shalom verodfehu./ Seek peace and pursue it. /
~Zev Shanken
* * *
Angela said, This DeathThing It’s gotta stop
when she called to tell me our children’s kindergarten teacher died of cancer.
I was a kid peace activist
when the Berrigan brother’s Trial of the Harrisburg 8
came to my little city, and outside agitators came from New York City
and made it interesting. Some stayed because you
could buy a 3 br house cheaper than renting a studio apt in NYC
It was so simple–
War does not make sense.
War is stupid
War is not healthy
War costs too much–
spend those billions and trillions on libraries, on schools, on art and music and theatre on healthcare for everyone.
Cure cancer. House the homeless,
Give Peace a Chance.
This Death Thing, it’s gotta stop.
~EK Smith
* * *
Jeremiad for Gaza November 2023″ by Annie Lanzillotto
-
-
-
-
- Jimmy Carter is in Hospice
-
-
-
and so is the Middle East peace process.
That’s the closest we came.
Oh, every U.S. President since, had his pic taken over a handshake,
but Jimmy with that smile, was the only one worth his salt.
That handshake he orchestrated got The Nobel Peace Prize in ’78,
Then Sadat got bullets.
Bullets for peace.
-
-
-
- Civilian is a word of the past.
-
-
And babies are soldiers now. Babies are martyrs.
Babies are military targets.
There are no civilians anymore.
Soldiers used to come home
secrets burying their eyes, silence
eating their lips, far off stares,
two streams of white smoke out of their nostrils roaring
like dragons over dinner tables.
Now everyone knows babies’ crushed skulls,
legs still as cement, cries underneath rubble,we all are bleeding under cement.
Palestine’s babies are all awarded the Purple Heart
-
-
-
- Martyr is one word; a better word than victim.
-
-
The Christ has no more potency in Jerusalem.
His anemic blood is paltry
compared to how many 1000’s of Palestinian babies?
Babies who cry no more?
The word sacrifice has finally garnered meaning.
Sacrifice is a word back in usage.
4. Unburying the alive
is not how it’s supposed to go
hands scooping pulverized cement
carefully pulling limbs
following the path of a leg
Is she breathing, this girl child of Gaza?
* * *
On our Forefathers land
The pages of the bible
Stand naked in shame
Over the evil that is done
In its name
~Ze’ev Willy Neumann
* * *
If we forget our shared humanity
May my right arm cease its movement
In all things war
In all purchases war
And lose the grasp for winning
I can do nothing
I can not do nothing
We have forgotten our mothers now
And watch children pressed to kill
All sisters violated
All brothers
All homes rubble
Or we can sit at one table
And with our right hand
Wipe each other’s eyes
~Anna Beresin
* * *
Lament for Gaza and the West Bank
Oh God who made us,
For some reason,
To be smart but not wise,
Who gave us finely tuned muscles of cunning
Alongside an atrophied compassion
in need of constant exercise,
Why are we like this?
So powerful in destruction,
So pitiful in understanding?
So deadly in our invention
So cruel in our self-protection
So capable of hiding
A bad idea under a good one.
Why are we like this?
If it is true that we are unfinished houses
That are only complete when you move in
Why did you not put your name over the door?
A neon sign? A billboard? “Work in progress?”
If we knew ourselves to be
Incomplete and not yet fully wired
Would we so easily unleash ourselves
On the fragile world,
Breaking things, breaking each other?
Now, too much is broken
Too much love severed by death and violence
Now
Generations will grieve
Generations will pass through
The revolving door of hate
Hatred longer than lifetimes
Unquenchable desire to hurt,
To wound, to degrade.
Generations will fear,
And in their fear will will turn
Redundant wheels of cruelty and affliction
If you will not stay our hands
Then give us strength to cry out
Strength to endure
What we know we are capable of.
~Grenold Coffee
* * *
Birthday in Gaza: A Pantoum
Their last food, saved with love for you,
became your birthday knafa feast,
that day your home became your tomb.
It lit your smile, joyful and sweet.
You shared your birthday knafa feast
as cousins crowded in the room,
lit by your joyful smile so sweet;
they sang, they danced in bliss for you.
As cousins crowded in the room,
the elders watched through open door;
they sang as well, and danced for you –
And then, a crash. And then, a roar.
The elders watched through open door
as sky appeared, then nothing. Space.
A crash, a roar, a shattered floor,
room, children, gone without a trace.
The empty sky, the dust, the space –
no food, no saving love for you;
all children gone without a trace
that day your home became your tomb.
~Jo Radner
* * *
dead silence
i lament
most of all
that i must
lament
yet another
war
yet another
innocent
child
buried in
the rubble
of its bedroom
and we
of one race
human
with gods or not
do not care
enough to stop it
~ Jan Emerson
* * *
Jesus was a Palestinian Jew
He grew up in Israel/Palestine; the Gazans are his people.
This story of Jesus’s crucifixion, death and resurrection is as relevant now as it was 2000 years ago.
Do we think it’s an accident that this story is being embodied right now, in this historical moment?
I see his cross amidst the rubble of Gaza with the eyes of starving children & grieving people looking up to him.
And God knows that this story has been used to promulgate enormous brutality in the name of Jesus and the world.
Embodied in this moment – the Jews and Gazans are among his people. And I see his thoughts standing there in the rubble
Pick up a stone –
Put the suffering of the world into the stone in whatever way that is for you.
It’s the story of the stone being moved from the tomb
May the stone of the heart of the world move
May that stone that keeps me from dwelling in the inexhaustible well of love, move
May the stone move.
May the Stone move from the Tomb of the World
My heart is breaking for the unfathomable brutality of human darkness
May the Stone move from the Tomb of the World
My heart is breaking for the messy conundrum of being human
Incarnate beings enfleshed in Time and Space
Held impossibly beautifully in the Divine Matrix of Love
May the Stone Move…
~Kathleen Mandeville, lament and sermon