Two Poems

 

Murray Alfredson

 

 

Gaza

 

‘Suffer the children’

 

I

 

Those who have known
holocaust children
cannot forget them.

Hunched as though
a kick were coming,
haunted of eye,
head ever turning,
their gait an almost
shuffle, and ever
like a cat
prepared to flee,
a silent scream
not to touch
with hand or word.

 

II

 

Israel’s leaders,
they of all folk
prison-like
have fenced in Gaza
bid generals
hurl their bombs,
their shells and rockets
from air and sea
and rolling tanks,
hurl clinging fire
scarring children
who survive,
as those of over
sixty years ago.

 

Shields

 

You say they hide
themselves behind
civilians as
human shields.

When you shell
a hospital
with phosphorous
that burns the structure
and the skin
around the wounded,
and when you shell
a school where people
flee for refuge
where are the shields?

And when you fire
your guided rockets
at the homes
of target persons,
sometimes with luck
you find them home
but surely slay
his wife and children.
Does a man hide
when he’s at home?

No whitewash words
paint thick enough
to hide your evil.
Murder is murder
whatever the wrapping.

 

 

Poet from Australia

 

 

 

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