Listen to an audio recording of I Will Carry You:
For nine months I carried you, like an answered prayer, as you grew and turned in my proud womb. And when I gave birth to you, no labour, no strain, no pain could lessen the joy and wonder of holding you in my arms, of nursing you at my breast. From the day you were born, I carried you until you were able to stand and walk by yourself, And even then, always I carried you in my thoughts, my worries, my fears that you might return to me bruised, beaten, bloody and broken, or dead from a bullet to the head, that you would never come home, and never again would I hear you calling, Mama, Mama! I carried you when you held up your arms to me, I carried you to bed when you were drowsy, I carried you when you woke from a bad dream, I carried you when you were sick with fever, I carried you when you fell and hurt yourself, I carried you when you could not run fast enough and were afraid. Now, through this genocide that has taken one of your legs, I carry you, one boy under each arm. Battered, blood-spattered and widowed, I carry you over rubble and ruins, I carry you past gaping craters and rotting garbage, I carry you down crooked, choked streets, I carry you down roads strewn with corpses. I carry you through shell fire, drone attacks, bomb blasts. Day and night, I carry you no matter how hungry, how thirsty, how weary, how lost I am, no matter how heavy you become I carry you, no burden to me, across this wasteland in search of a safe place, in search of home. Until this hell on earth is over, I will carry you through wind, rain and fire, I will carry you, if I must, over mountains, I will carry you across the desert, I will carry you over water. On my hands and knees, I will crawl when I cannot take another step, and carry you on my back. When, at the end of this long journey, my arms are too weak and slack, my legs too stiff and sore, my feet blistered and bloody, my back bent and broken, I will carry you in my heart to my grave and never once let go.
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I hesitate to try to attach any of my own inadequate words to express the myriad of feelings evoked; yet I must try. Your words here express the 'awful truth'... the convergence of beauty and love with grief, shock and horror at the brutality that we know is also part of our reality. Relatively comfortably ensconced thousands of miles away from this scene, many of us can simply choose to avoid seeing it or to ignore it altogether; but we can not for ALL are our family. I can only pray that mercy, justice and the love that spawns such things will eventually rise ascendant throughout the human world.
You illustrate what we cannot see. No eyes on the ground. All journalists ground to dirt.
Horror every living dying moment. Whole families pulverized.
Israelis celebrate waiting for "their' land to be swept clean of rubble and flesh to become beach front condos for American war criminals.