B"H 

13 December 2023/1 Tevet 5784

Dear poets, friends of poetry and friends,
We hope, of Israel:
                                     The nineteenth issue
Of The Deronda Review is now online
And printed copies, too, are on the way –
A gathering of poems centering
Upon the theme of “soul,” planned and composed
Last spring and summer in what now appears
A different world.
                                    We at least feel it so,
In a country that has taken a great wound
And still bleeds daily with its falling sons
In a war meant to stop one source of evil –
Pray we succeed!
                                  Yet surely things look different
Also to those in other lands that seemed
Like havens of civility, secure
From history’s worst horrors, who now see
The children of their countrymen turned rabid,
Against the good, applauding dreadful deeds,
While journalism, once supposed to seek
The truth, relays as fact the raw false witness
Of those whose crimes it all-too-briefly noticed!
Amid such pandaemonium, who can listen
For the nuances that announce the soul?

Yet soul’s at stake in this, if we allow
That soul has roots in earth as well as heaven,
In all those customs, laws, and true affections
That serve to guard the spirit from compulsion,
That weave the nest from which the soul can rise.
Here, then, we face a power that respects
None of these things, that tramples all compassion,
Would bring the world beneath the rule of fear.

If that were all. But then there are those wolves
In suits, who came with words of sympathy
For our pain, modulating soon to pity
For those we have no choice but to destroy
Or dispossess, if we’re to keep our lives.
These are the Globalists.  They need the oil,
Of course, and have to think about the sharers
Of the murderers’ beliefs, too prone to riot,
Who are everywhere. But it is more than that.
They are part of something that for long has waged
Against the soul a warfare undeclared –
Perhaps to some extent, even unconscious --
But none the less pernicious and determined,
Which for the sake of profit and control,
Drowns out the speech of poetry with language
That is not speech of sentient human beings,
Besets the mind with messages subverting
Reflection, judgment and self-governance
And all of those “respectable attachments”
That make the living tissues of a people
Distinguishable from a mob or herd
Of dumb consumers packed awaiting slaughter.
This global enterprise, that more and more
Assumes the volume of an Entity,
Abhors all borders which define a being
Or thing that can be cherished, that is not
Fungible.  And this Land of Israel,
This earth, these vales where Abraham pitched his tent,
These paths our kings and prophets walked, this city
Toward which hope’s gaze is turned, is such a thing,
In the eye of all-dissolving greed  a thorn.

That Globe! It rose, some decades which now seem
An age ago, in photographs from space
(For certain readers, some years earlier
In the words of Paul Celan), seeming to summon
An all-encircling care, but soon repurposed
In many a logo of world-girdling greed!
Eclipsed behind its various misuses
Is Earth as symbol of our common care
For now; but still one holy Land remains,
In which a good and happy life takes root,
And from which good comes to the world, when not
Blocked out by those who do not love the good.

Well, we are here, and some of you are there,
Seemingly.  But we think that every poem
That rises from – again – the soul – puts up
A little barricade against the onslaught
Of falsehood, holds some spot of holy ground.
So we commend, with thanks to those who sent them,
These poems to your attention; and would also
Point out, again, the file of poems rising
From this our present war, which still receives,
And still invites, new poems.
                                                    With our prayers
For all who stand, wherever they may be,
Beside the flag of human hope and freedom,*

Esther Cameron
Mindy Aber Barad
Editors, The Deronda Review


*We here too, in the emptiness/Stand by the banners—Paul Celan