Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/weekly-poem-your-village Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Weekly Poem: ‘Your Village’ Arts May 14, 2012 3:10 PM EDT By Elana Bell Once in a village that is burning because a village is always somewhere burning And if you do not look because it is not your village it is still your village In that village is a hollow child You drown when he looks at you with his black, black eyes And if you do not cry because he is not your child he is still your child All the animals that could run away have run away The trapped ones make an orchestra of their hunger The houses are ruin Nothing grows in the garden The grandfather’s grave is there A small stone under the shade of a charred oak Who will brush off the dead leaves Who will call his name for morning prayer Where will they — the ones who slept in this house and ate from this dirt — ? Elana Bell is the author of “Eyes, Stone” (2012, LSU Press), winner of the Walt Whitman Award for 2011. Her poems have appeared in Harvard Review, Massachusetts Review, CALYX, and elsewhere. Bell is the writer-in-residence at the Bronx Academy of Letters and lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.
By Elana Bell Once in a village that is burning because a village is always somewhere burning And if you do not look because it is not your village it is still your village In that village is a hollow child You drown when he looks at you with his black, black eyes And if you do not cry because he is not your child he is still your child All the animals that could run away have run away The trapped ones make an orchestra of their hunger The houses are ruin Nothing grows in the garden The grandfather’s grave is there A small stone under the shade of a charred oak Who will brush off the dead leaves Who will call his name for morning prayer Where will they — the ones who slept in this house and ate from this dirt — ? Elana Bell is the author of “Eyes, Stone” (2012, LSU Press), winner of the Walt Whitman Award for 2011. Her poems have appeared in Harvard Review, Massachusetts Review, CALYX, and elsewhere. Bell is the writer-in-residence at the Bronx Academy of Letters and lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.