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