Sunday, July 20, 2014

The End, Not Yet, a poem

The End, Not Yet


The obus punched
through the wall
of the creche,

over-turned
playpens and
beds, blew up

boys, girls,
wrapped now
in shrouds

run through
Gaza streets
mourned

on Main
and other
thoroughfares

including
the old stones
of the Old City,

Tel Aviv,
New York avenues,
as far away

as Cho Fu Sa
and Timbuktu.
Masked men,

wielding guns,
heads of
government

ordering
invasions,
rockets lobbed

over gated
communities,
will not stop

human waves,
lamentation,
protests hurled.


Fighting
will stop again;
we will bury

our dead again
and look for
bread and oil

again
on the Strip.
Boys will dip

into the sea
and will not fall
to errant shells,

unless we
agree once
and for all

that the end
of things
has come,

but how
to hasten
the executioner

to visit, the poem
surviving still,
a testament?


Indran Amirthanayagam, July 20. 2014