Thursday, 14 March 2024

#1536 - from the river to the sea

 


1536

5.75

15.iii.24

from the river to the sea

thinking of Gaza

 

no school

no work

no food

no wash

no drink

no clothes

no trust

no hope

 

hands over heads, duck

useless gesture

 

it was Samson and Delilah here

how many times is a place destroyed?

 

and come up from nothing

 

but dust

but death from the air

but limblessness

but the gun aimed straight

 

where’s terror?

whose?

still a name persists

 

Alexander was so great

he killed everyone

and then a great centre of learning

 

now I am their victim forever

I am one in the corner here

 

friends won’t you give please

give for my gun its forever

 

I am saying I want to survive

 

from the river to the sea

 

Seleucids and the Ptolemies

tug-o-war back then

 

a child, knowing nothing, put to the sword

Pompey, Herod the great

wreckers and builders in turn

 

and it’s our place, the book says

 

then blessed Saint Porphyrius

who smashed the temples down

 

place of pilgrimage

 

Crusaders, Saladin

the Ottomans, the Brits

the old gods all long gone

 

churches into mosques

there was a golden age here once

who’ll remember?

 

too many names, the conquerors

and who do you think survived?

 

the merciful

the compassionate

the maker of the universe

 

and we are animals to them

 

but the surgical truth of hate

head shot with fear

 

just fear is all is left

and hunger

 

a tank rolling over

a rocket fired

 

that’s what they are to me

 

it’s all happening again

 

just a difference of opinion

they say it’s the same God too

 

always was and always will be

 

there’s nothing on the Earth like that

 

is there a better place for proof?

 

they are bulldozing the prison

tunnelling again

 

once and somewhere

all these were people

they loved

they laughed

you could talk with them

 

today

no school

no work

no food

no wash

no drink

no clothes

no trust

no hope

 

trumpets to crescendo

and the walls come down

 

we must remember where we are

and who

all this

in the name of the only one God


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