Poem for Palestine
Gaza may have slipped down the corporate newsfeed, but the horrors of the Israeli onslaught continue unabated.
WHAT THE NIGHT TELLS ME
Even in sleeplessness to feel the comfort
Of a good bed; of a roof over my head;
Of bedside reading, or whatever.
Some kind of acceptance
Of the wearisome accounting
Of the bleary hours,
Changed aspect of the clock face
Witnessing time laid waste.
Night extends beyond me in silence
Over the island. Over the still sea envisioned,
Moon-glimmered Mediterranean.
Moving across it, come to its eastern reaches,
I would soon find myself at a stretch of shore
Where night can never settle,
Never can draw dark comfort
Over a tortured strip of earth
Perimetred and pulverised.
The sonic booms of airborne predators
Startle a population never more
Than half-asleep, the night sky lacerated,
Lurid streaks, earth quaking,
Shaken by missile strike.
Whose will they be tonight, those puffs of smoke
That bloom from out of the grey terrain
Beneath the cross-hairs,
Abstract when viewed from above,
The latest neighbourhoods reduced to rubble,
Refugee camps terrorised?
Birds bewildered in panic bang against
What windowpanes are left,
Amidst the ruins children, these last months
Having aged them years, no succour given,
Parents themselves entrapped
In the interminable nightmare
Yielding at first light only to bad-dream day.
Early pallor must be already close
That will roll its bloodshot eye
Upon the works of darkness there;
Here meanwhile birds in the eaves
Not far from my pillowed head
Sleep on securely, hours away as yet
From when their chirping will get going,
Unconcernedly as ever.
Nothing till then but this insomnia
Remains to me, my only offering
To the roof of stars, blank ceiling stared at,
Space upheld by my bedroom;
In this immensity of helplessness
Keen to the silence: listening to cries unheard.