Poet and professor Oludamini Ogunnaike, who has previously written and published two elegies – for George Floyd and Gaza – with us, shares a new one for the student protests and encampments that blossomed across the country this past spring calling for an end to the genocide of Gaza and the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Because I could not say it, I wrote it out in verse
—Emily Dickinson
Look here at where our camp was
Where they trampled campus doves
Mourning for their martyred loves
Striving to stem death’s cold flood
Tread softly upon this ground
For our dreams lie buried there
Over these campsites’ traces
Walk gently, or on the air
Don’t stomp so hard on my heart
Lest my blood splash everywhere
Under trees, upon the grass,
Bent and brown, beat-down ground’s hair
Earth’s flesh filled up with the slain
Age on age, piled up remains
Can you read these faded stains?
Lives spilled out on bombed-out plains
Children’s tears fall thick as rain
Beneath parents’ shrieks of pain
Fogs of lies choke throats and brains
Our world, hope, lie split in twain
Shadows battle with the dawn
Mottled, mixed with sad birdsongs
Look and read these camps’ remnants
Like fawn’s tracks across the lawn
Like runes, ancient, carved in stone
Last night’s love bites, lingering on
Like old tattoos, faded, faint
Earth’s skin remembers these wrongs
Here is where we met our loves
Here is where we took our stand
Until Fate swept us away
Easily as foam on sand
But behind this foam, tides’ waves
Steadily reshape the land
We said, “peace,” they pointed guns
We said “free,” they bound our hands
Eyes, blank rocks, and hearts harder
Armored against empathy
Wielding their own repressed fears
Shields against morality
Trapped in suits and combat boots
Cut off from humanity
Quiet! praying for our dead
Summons troops of mad zombies
Just shut up and watch them die
For them you can only cry
Silent tears from mace-filled eyes
Bodies prostrate, hands zip-tied
We have nothing but the truth
They’ll do all things for this lie
Accusations all revealed
As admissions of their crimes
Kings and emperors all nude
Like Fir‘awn and like Thamud
Fear falls, then all they’ve accrued
Vanishes like morning dew
Ask ‘Ad and Babylon too
Where their crimes dragged them off to?
Ditches dug to burn orphans
Will swallow their killers soon
For dreams slumbering, sigh a prayer
Coax a spark from ashes’ lair
Rising like smoke through the air
Kites flying above despair
May clouds’ thundering rain repair
Broken hearts strewn everywhere
Blooming flowers, flaming, fair
Love notes like defiant flares
Tread softly on this soft ground
For our dreams are buried there
Dreams crushed in cocoons dissolve,
Emerge, butterflies in pairs
Dry eyes are blind to life, but
It shines out from children’s stares
Look at where this camp once was,
Doves’ nests trampled without care
Stop here, listen, these winds tell
We and the Earth remember well
Though we’re weak, outgunned, in need
Inna Allāha ‘ala kulli shayin shaheed
Heed the land beneath your feet:
Allāhu min warā’ihim muḥeeṭ
Oludamini Ogunnaike is an Associate Professor of African Religious Thought at the University of Virginia. His research is focused on Sufism in West Africa and Sufi poetry, as well as indigenous African traditions, especially Ifa. He is the author of Deep Knowledge: Ways of Knowing in Sufism and Ifa, Two West African Intellectual Traditions (PSU Press, 2020), Poetry in Praise of Prophetic Perfection: West African Madīh Poetry and its Precedents (Islamic Texts Society, 2020), and The Book of Clouds (Fons Vitae, 2024).
Feature image: “Students march, encamp for Palestine” by Joe Piette is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.
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