{"id":4084,"date":"2010-04-12T00:01:42","date_gmt":"2010-04-11T22:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms2\/?p=4084"},"modified":"2011-01-04T21:16:49","modified_gmt":"2011-01-04T20:16:49","slug":"a-poem-we-are-coming-to-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2010\/04\/a-poem-we-are-coming-to-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"(A POEM) WE ARE COMING TO GAZA"},"content":{"rendered":"

After The Gaza Freedom March in Cairo, Dec 2009, organised by Code Pink.
\n<\/em>
\nWe are coming to Gaza
\nfrom different places \u2014<\/p>\n

some of us were born in the tunnels
\nthat feed Palestine with Irish blood;
\nothers have further to travel.<\/p>\n

Some are crossing an ocean of assumptions.
\nSome picking their way through a minefield
\nof qualms and shifting ideals.<\/p>\n

A few are scrambling from the top floors of skyscrapers,
\ntrailing PR jargon and CNN headlines.<\/p>\n

Many are breasting the third wave
\nof another global struggle \u2014
\nuntil it crashes on a thirty foot wall
\nand trickles down into a no-man\u2019s land
\nof summary executions and scrap metal.<\/p>\n

Forsaking the thin air of neutrality,
\ncresting the moguls of four languages,
\na team of young idealists
\nslaloms down the mountains of Geneva.<\/p>\n

Others are striding through the clear air of the Highlands;
\nrising up from the pavement silhouettes of Hiroshima;
\nor sailing round the Cape of Good Hope
\nin The Amandla Intifada<\/em>;<\/p>\n

Above us, a man is airlifting his wounded buddies
\nfrom the rice paddies of Nam.<\/p>\n

In front of us, an eighty-five year old woman
\nis carrying the hunger of Auschwitz
\nin her belly.\u00a0 It roars as she walks
\nlike an awakening lion.<\/p>\n

And when we are stopped in a dusty Cariene square,
\nbleating and blaring with car horns,
\ngirded by squads of baby-faced riot police,
\nsome of us dance, hand-in-hand,
\nto the husky music of a Rabbi\u2019s voice,
\nthe gusty lungfuls of a stomach Steinway from Vermont,
\nthe gift of a German fiddle
\ndonated by the toe-tapping folk of East Sussex.<\/p>\n

And if we didn\u2019t suspect it already,
\nyes, the French are insatiable \u2014
\nfuelled on pizza, truffles and five o\u2019clock prayers,
\nthey chant, rap and drum all night, every night,
\nto keep the pavement warm<\/p>\n

for those painfully returning
\nto a homeland they\u2019ve never been allowed in,
\nfamilies they\u2019ve never met;
\nfor those dragging baggage full of soiled laundry
\nthey long to wash in the tears of arrival,
\ndry in the searing Palestinian sun.<\/p>\n

And as our movement dawns
\nand the barricades tighten,
\nthen open a crack
\nto admit just \u2018the sincere humanitarians\u2019
\nand bar all \u2018hooligans and trouble-makers\u2019 \u2026<\/p>\n

someone from an empire
\nwith a thousand borders but no bounds,
\nbarges to the head of the queue \u2014<\/p>\n

while others from his shores, at last,
\nblush the colour of their bright pink T-shirts
\nturn and listen to those
\nwho have never stopped saying:<\/p>\n

We are coming to Gaza
\ntogether.
\nWe are coming for the Gazans.<\/p>\n

Because we did not come for the Armenians.
\nBecause we came too late for the Jews.<\/p>\n

And if we do not come now, together,
\nGaza will soon be a cemetery
\na livid scar in our memories,
\na strip of flesh ripped
\nfrom the blank face of the world.<\/p>\n

**********************<\/p>\n

(Join the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions)<\/em> 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<\/strong> products whose BARCODE<\/strong><\/span> starts with 72 9<\/strong><\/span>, which indicates that it is produced in Israel. DO YOUR PART! MAKE A DIFFERENCE! 7 2 9<\/span><\/strong>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are coming to Gaza
\nfrom different places \u2014<\/p>\n

some of us were born in the tunnels
\nthat feed Palestine with Irish blood;
\nothers have further to travel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4084\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}