(A POEM) WE ARE COMING TO GAZA

PALESTINE - ISRAEL, 12 Apr 2010

Naomi Foyle – TRANSCEND Media Service

After The Gaza Freedom March in Cairo, Dec 2009, organised by Code Pink.

We are coming to Gaza
from different places —

some of us were born in the tunnels
that feed Palestine with Irish blood;
others have further to travel.

Some are crossing an ocean of assumptions.
Some picking their way through a minefield
of qualms and shifting ideals.

A few are scrambling from the top floors of skyscrapers,
trailing PR jargon and CNN headlines.

Many are breasting the third wave
of another global struggle —
until it crashes on a thirty foot wall
and trickles down into a no-man’s land
of summary executions and scrap metal.

Forsaking the thin air of neutrality,
cresting the moguls of four languages,
a team of young idealists
slaloms down the mountains of Geneva.

Others are striding through the clear air of the Highlands;
rising up from the pavement silhouettes of Hiroshima;
or sailing round the Cape of Good Hope
in The Amandla Intifada;

Above us, a man is airlifting his wounded buddies
from the rice paddies of Nam.

In front of us, an eighty-five year old woman
is carrying the hunger of Auschwitz
in her belly.  It roars as she walks
like an awakening lion.

And when we are stopped in a dusty Cariene square,
bleating and blaring with car horns,
girded by squads of baby-faced riot police,
some of us dance, hand-in-hand,
to the husky music of a Rabbi’s voice,
the gusty lungfuls of a stomach Steinway from Vermont,
the gift of a German fiddle
donated by the toe-tapping folk of East Sussex.

And if we didn’t suspect it already,
yes, the French are insatiable —
fuelled on pizza, truffles and five o’clock prayers,
they chant, rap and drum all night, every night,
to keep the pavement warm

for those painfully returning
to a homeland they’ve never been allowed in,
families they’ve never met;
for those dragging baggage full of soiled laundry
they long to wash in the tears of arrival,
dry in the searing Palestinian sun.

And as our movement dawns
and the barricades tighten,
then open a crack
to admit just ‘the sincere humanitarians’
and bar all ‘hooligans and trouble-makers’ …

someone from an empire
with a thousand borders but no bounds,
barges to the head of the queue —

while others from his shores, at last,
blush the colour of their bright pink T-shirts
turn and listen to those
who have never stopped saying:

We are coming to Gaza
together.
We are coming for the Gazans.

Because we did not come for the Armenians.
Because we came too late for the Jews.

And if we do not come now, together,
Gaza will soon be a cemetery
a livid scar in our memories,
a strip of flesh ripped
from the blank face of the world.

**********************

(Join the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) campaign toprotest the Israeli barbaric siege of Gaza, illegal occupation ofPalestine, the apartheid wall, and its inhuman and degrading treatmentof the Palestinian people: DON’T BUY products whose BARCODE starts with 72 9, which indicates that it is produced in Israel. DO YOUR PART! MAKE A DIFFERENCE! 7 2 9)

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 12 Apr 2010.

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