In response to the global surge of Antisemitism. A poem.
Ode to the Boots on the Ground
Once, when no land bore our name,
when the winds carried whispers of loss,
they turned our prayers into ashes,
our voices into silence, our breath into dust.
Six million souls swallowed by fire,
while the world turned its gaze away.
But the earth remembers, the sky does not forget.
And from sorrow’s ruins, Israel rose—
a home, a refuge, a shield against the tide.
Yet shadows of the past crept forth again,
and on the seventh of October, darkness returned,
cloaked in fire, armed with hate.
They came as they always have,
to silence the ink, to shatter the voice,
to burn the books yet unwritten,
to snuff out the minds yet to shine.
But we are not the wandering ghosts of history,
not the exiles without a name.
Boots on the ground.
No longer only hands that pen theories,
no longer only minds that forge ideas.
Now hands hold weapons to guard life itself,
and minds strategize not for art, but for survival.
If we had these boots in ’39,
could we have broken the gas chambers’ doors?
If we had these boots in ’42,
could we have lifted six million from the flames?
Today, we do not ask—we act.
They strike, we rise.
They invade, we defend.
They weep for the killers,
we mourn the dreamers lost.
How many unborn Einsteins
vanished before their first equation?
How many poets, how many painters,
were stilled before the brush met canvas?
How many voices, how many visions,
were torn from the threads of time?
Yet still, we endure.
Still, we write.
Still, we build.
Still, we stand.
The past will not repeat itself.
Not with boots on the ground,
not with fire in our veins,
not with memory in our bones.
Rest, our fallen, beneath the olive trees.
Rest, our soldiers, within the soil you swore to save.
Rest, our thinkers, within the books yet to be written.
And as long as one candle burns,
as long as one star glows,
as long as one heart beats—
we are here.
And we will not fall.
Dr. Suryaraju Mattimalla – is an Indian asylum seeker from Germany. Dr. Mattimalla is a poet, scholar, and vegan. He regularly publishes poems in Indian-based daily English newspapers. He is the author of “Untouchable Poems: Lived Experience with Hindu Religion, Ideology, and Society” (2024), published by Wipf & Stock, and the author of the globally acclaimed “Compatibility of the Death Penalty with the Purpose of Criminal Punishment in Ethiopia” (2018), published by The Age of Human Rights Journal. His first child was killed by honor killing in India in 2010.
