GAZA: SONG OF THE PSALMIST KING

 

GAZA: SONG OF THE PSALMIST KING

 

Looking up, in the pockmarked morning light

Raven black parachutes take flight, 

Their silken heartstrings taut,

To billow, then suddenly fill, before

Catching an onshore breeze

Across the Philistine sea, the Syrian sea,

Then drifting slowly, ever slowly, down, down

From the blue, blue skies,

Towards Adamah: to resuscitate, 

To commiserate; to compensate;

Or like me, too late, to improvise.

 

Watching, waiting, baiting

Kach vultures, gyps kahane, salivating

Hover, spreadeagled haut;

No longer concealed, or poisoned.

The secret nakam cabals, brought

In a vortex of morbid descent,

Wind within wind, Hate within Hate, 

The Hell circles of Dante’s fate.

From the blue, blue skies. 

They dip wings in the salt sea brine,

Then eviscerate,

Sightless children’s eyes.

 

Revenge, retribution, punishment, 

The Song of Moses and the psalmist King:

Seeking

An ending as old as Time.

 

Time is weary though, 

Of a rendered past, present and future:

A putrid creature

As old as Time.

 

A blood libel some profane,

Or blood lust more maintain, 

The Eretz response

To Amalek’s bursting forth from the ghetto,

Defiling, dismembering the female deity;

Dinah, Shekhinah, the maidens of Kfar Aza, 

And all our humanity.

 

  

A Biblical reprise, 

From the blue, blue skies

Masked butcher shrikes 

And whining drones

With David’s song, in their hearts,

Impale equal innocents of Abraham’s flock,

On the thorns and exposed steel 

Of Gaza’s insanity.

A chorus of a high-pitched squeal,

And our lost humanity.

 

All is fallow there now, razed within. 

Philistia’s ground levelled with glycerin,

And the caterpillar tracks of tanks.

Where once an Ottoman Sultan’s whim,

Turgha, did dictate,

The Knesset will imitate,

And not hesitate, 

To steal more land from before time,

The end of Time.

To then settle there, a vultures’ roost

On dead olive trees.