"How She Now Sits All Alone," poetry

Revised Edition: LukivPress (Victoria, BC), 2022.

Introduction (Lamentations)

Anguish, the essence of Jeremiah's pain over the fall of Jerusalem (607 BCE) at the hand of Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, overflows the words of this book that the prophet wrote after 40 years of warning (647 to 607 BCE) that Jehovah would indeed bring this apostate city to an ignoble end. Yes! At the end of an 18-month siege, Nebuchadnezzar's war machine had breached Jerusalem's wall! The burning of Jeremiah's beloved city horribly fresh in his mind and heart, he wrote five poems (chapters) that defined his pain-the first four, dirges; the last, a prayer, a communal petition to Jehovah for restoration.

An excerpt

Chapter 2

Our tent, aflame,

Our arrows, broken,

Our mighty force,

Like a warrior tossed

Down a well,

Our towers, fallen,

Our walls, rubble,

Haunts for the goat-

Shaped demons,

Our wombs, dry

Like Ghor sand,

Our mouths, dry,

Like the faith of false

Prophets,

Our lineage, a garment

Eaten up by moths,

Our future, uprooted,

Like cedars, fallen,

Like hope, fallen,

Our gates, burned,

Torn asunder,

O Samson, have you

Unleashed your right

Arm as you did at the

Wall of Gaza?

O mothers, starved

By fright and the Baby-

Lonian sword,

Have you finally stopped

Eating your children?

The author

Dan Lukiv, published in 19 countries, is a poet, novelist, columnist, short story and article writer, and independent education researcher (hermeneutic phenomenology). As a creative writer, he apprenticed with Canada's Professor Robert Harlow (recipient of the George Woodcock Achievement award for an outstanding literary career), the USA's Paul Bagdon (Spur Award finalist for Best Original Paperback), and England's D. M. Thomas (recipient of the Cheltenham Prize for Literature, Orwell Prize [biography], Los Angeles Fiction Prize, and Cholmondeley award for poetry). He attended The University of British Columbia (creative writing department), the acclaimed Humber School for Writers (poetry writing program), and Writer's Digest University (novel writing program).