The personal belongings of festival-goers are seen at the site of an attack on the Nova Festival by Hamas terrorists from Gaza, near Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel, Oct. 12, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

The introduction to the anthology Shiva: Poems of October 7, notes that the most common response to the Hamas attack of October 7 was “ain milim” — “there are no words.”

Rachel Korazim, Michael Bohnen, and Heather Silverman are the editors of the book, which contain numerous powerful poems that represent feelings of heartache all Israelis and Jews experienced on October 7.

Korazim, 78, said her time teaching poetry in English for many years at the Shalom Hartman Institute, Hebrew University, and online, has given her a wealth of experiences with students.

During the Covid pandemic, she grew a community of hundreds of poetry students.

“When October 7 hit, I realized I could not continue what I planned to teach, and I started collecting works [about what happened] on October 10,” Korazim told me in an interview.

She said that rabbis approached her to create a class, and one advised her to make an anthology. The editors refined and edited translations, and the book is now printed in Israel and available at Amazon.

People often assume that poetry can help people deal with issues emotionally, as a catharsis from trauma.

“I don’t read poetry as being anything but poetry,” Korazim said. “For some people, it is a catharsis. For other people, it’s just a way to express themselves. You didn’t have a tsunami of poetry after 9/11 in America. But we did have it now in Israel. Throughout our history, we have put high value on poetry. If you look at Jewish history and Israeli history, you will see waves of poetry in regular times but also after catastrophe.”

A portion of Ran Shayit’s “A Landscape Sketch Without Entering Into Graphic Details,” hits hard:

There are no words for this

A strong smell of suffocation from the depths of a well

Like The palms of a dead man

Holding onto the foundation of a house…”

Many recognize Rachel Goldberg-Polin for her pleas and media appearances as she advocated for her son Hersh, who was taken hostage. He was murdered by Hamas, and his body was recovered at the end of August.

Her poem, “One Tiny Seed,” includes:

There is a Yiddish lullaby that says “Your mother will cry a

Thousand tears before you grow to be a man.”

I have cried a million tears in the last 67 days. …

Our sea of tears

They all taste the same.

Can we take them gather them up, and remove the salt,

And then pour them over our desert of despair …

And plant one tiny seed

A seed wrapped in pain, trauma, fear and hope?

Osnat Eldar’s poem, “Sea Fragments,” begins with Psalm 93 and is dedicated to Romi Suissa, a six-year-old girl whose parents were murdered by Hamas.

Romi hid in the backseat, and was eventually rescued by a police officer in a now famous recording where she asks the man who saved her and her sister: “Are you Israeli?”

In another of Eldar’s poems, she writes:

Mothers

If only they could change places with the boy or the girl

Ready for captivity or death.

In “A Good Day,” Tal Shavit writes:

I want to turn myself into bulletproof vests

For all the fighters,

Become iron domes

Over the heads of all the girls,

Each and every one.

One of the most powerful images is depicted in Dael Rodrigues Garcia’s “A Fallen Soldier”:

A soldier is falling

Like a coin into a tzedakah box

He bumps into the copper coins

Secretly, he falls anonymously,

He saves from death

He rattles with his brothers

He kisses their faces

Crusted with the sweat of battle

And his father and mother stretch out their hands

Begging me to bring him back

Through the narrow

Slit.

Garcia explained that the poem was written before October 7, but having lived in Israel, he recognizes that, “the deep act of kindness done for you by others who protect you, which is often hidden, is the greatest act of charity.”

There are different ways that the human mind processes horror. This book is a gut-wrenching assessment of the fragility, vulnerability, and undeniability that despite the trauma we’ve experienced, those who are alive continue to live. Net proceeds of sales of the book will be donated to the Israel Trauma Coalition, which works with victims of October 7.

The author is a writer based in New York.