Palm Sunday, 2017
Poetry by Anne Mioduchowska
While we slept,
unspeakable grief slipped into
the Coptic places of worship in Tanta
and Alexandria, cities best known till now
for sweetshops and roasted chickpeas,
for books and ships.
Forty-eight dead. Scores wounded.
Years ago a child
had welcomed us in a Coptic church.
Basket of bread in the small hands,
his mother’s encouraging face.
Curious strangers,
we had walked in freely
toward the end of the service,
the brethren munching on broken loaves,
exchanging news, the atmosphere
of a family gathering new to us,
enticing.
While we chewed and swallowed,
the bearded priest concluded his ritual
by the candle-lit altar, then walked
down the length of the church
dipping his hand in holy water.
We left wet and happy.
Forty-eight.
The raw pain on the screen indecent,
I squeeze my eyes shut. The child
in his Sunday best, slicked down hair,
basket of bread,
arms outstretched in a gesture as old
as the compulsion to kill.