In Memoriam Rachel Corrie

http://windowintopalestine.blogspot.com/2010/03/rachel-corries-parents-get-nasty-letter.html In March of 2003 this poem was published about Rachel Corrie. I writer thinks it is fitting that it memorialize her today as then. It should be noted that Steve Plaut wrote about the writer also in Front Page of the Jewish Press as "The Anti-Semitic Poet at the University of La Verne." CounterPunch

March 19, 2003
In Memoriam
Rachel Corrie

By WILLIAM A. COOK

The picture told the story:
this wisp of a girl defiant
against the armored clad Goliath
Towering above her,
An illustration from the Book of Kings.

This orange-coated giant
Went out from Israel,
The land of the Philistines,
To slaughter the Palestinians.

And he stood six cubits and a span
Above those clustered about their homes.
And he had treaded greaves about the knees,
Sheets of steel about his shoulders,
And shafts thrust forward
To hold his spear, the blade of death.

All who saw him fled in terror
Save this gentle girl,
Who held God's voice in her megaphone.
Did she see the tight curl of his lip
As he sat in his judgment seat
And she stood in the shadow of death?

Did he, when his day was done,
Hose the blood from his blade?
Did he lean against his protective armor
And gaze at the setting sun?
Did he go home that night
And place his yarmulka beside the door?
Did he greet his wife with a loving kiss,
And grasp his daughter tightly to his breast?
And did she, in fear, plead "Be gentle, dear"?

William Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. His new book, Psalms for the 21st Century, was just published by Mellen Press. He can be reached at: wcook@laverne.edu. Since then he has published Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy, The Rape of Palestine, The Chronicles of Nefaria, a novella due for publication in Arabic this spring, and a forthcoming work, The Plight of the Palestinians due for June.