Gaza

Gaza

After Audre Lorde’s Suffer the Children

Pity us

We have broken the sky

And now who will protect our eyes

Who desert ourselves and you in storm and consequence.

Empty our skin

In the absence of future olives

We who let fear bulldoze your roots

rending even the hope of branch

Our mouths dry into suffering

Thin slingshot shadow sliced lips

shape of how silent cowardice

etches our children into sun.

Who pay taxes into tanks

Turning doubt into lead

Will wait in vain for cleansing from the clouds

And where will we start digging

What love will we find buried

What legend beneath the skin of the unnameable polity

Palestine

Those who love you remember what children are

The sweetness we would kill

Lest face ourselves

The knowledge we would squash again Soweto

Have we yet wept for who we could have been

Tears replace the rain

warriors build rock altars to their youth

but however many pearls the dead sea offers

Our feet will mourn the insights we have trampled

our eyes stay open

filling with dust.