By PEDRO TIERRA*
(Or: they can't keep being born)
30 thousand dead.
Does this information fit in a verse?
Half of those killed in this war are children.
What material will the poetry of that time be written with?
Gaza:
70% of the identified bodies are women.
Counting pregnant women.
There is a war against the belly
of Palestinian women.
They can't keep being born...
They can't keep being born...
They can't keep being born
in Gaza.
They can't keep being born
in Ramallah.
They (the Palestinians)
they cannot continue to be born.
Eighty-four years after Auschwitz,
moves before my eyes of amazement
a war of extermination
against women and children.
Moves before my worn eyes
by the painful contemplation of the saga
in search of possible resurrection
a war against women and children
over the sands of Gaza.
"In Ramah a voice was heard,
lots of crying and moaning.
It is Raquel who cries
the murdered children
and doesn't want to be comforted
because he lost them forever.” (Mt.12,18)
(I won't be the voice,
from the comfort of the shade
that shelters me,
in this twilight of life,
What will I say to the enraged slaves
how to shake shoulders
the oppression that crushes them.)
Light up the memory
of the King David Hotel explosion,
July 22, 1946 at 12:37 pm.
Jerusalem was shaken:
91 dead. 45 injured.
What name to give this act?
Ask Menachen Beguin.
Today, we need to unearth
those displaced to nowhere.
Those who can no longer return
of the rubble, the sand,
from the ashes, from the wind that blows
about the memory of Gaza.
Where will Islam Hamed go?
It is necessary to rekindle your absence
the bombarded sunlight
yesterday afternoon.
And ask the heart of the bombs:
what fate awaits a million and a half
of Palestinians sheltered in Rafah?
Rubble in the streets.
Debris of bodies.
Rubble in souls.
“He became very angry and ordered massacres,
in Belém and its surroundings,
all boys two years old and under,
according to the exact time
who had asked the Magi. (Mt,12-16)
There is no light in Al-Shifa Hospital
that allows a suture to be placed
in the broken bodies
by the bombings.
A suture on the body of Palestine:
there will be a generation of mutilated
condemned to look without tenderness
in the sharp pain of that missing leg,
on skin that no longer protects
exposed flesh,
Benjamin Netanyahu's fingerprints.
I collect my astonishment and walk away
while I hear the hoarse voice
that emerges from the south and breaks into pieces
the blind mirrors of the world's indifference...
*Pedro Tierra is a poet. Former president of the Perseu Abramo Foundation.
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