And what have we come to?
tents of nomads
thunder and drawn swords over
our heads, some

terror we expect
listen        houses
collapsing in the one
word: home.

From a poem by Marina Tsvetaeva called ‘Poem of the End’

For love is flesh, it is a
flower flooded with blood.
Did you think it was just a
little chat across the table

‘I Explain a Few Things’ by Chilean poet and writer Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) is a poem that delves into the Spanish Civil War of the mid-1930s and the devastation that the fascist bombing of Guernica wrought. The poem resonates with the feeling of desolation, shot through (pardon the pun) with gruesome imagery:

 My house was called
“The house with the flowers” because around it
Geraniums exploded. It was
A beautiful house
With dogs and kids …

Then one morning flames
Came out of the ground
Devouring human beings.
From then on fire,
Gunpowder from then on,
From then on blood …
Bandits with black monks giving their blessing
Came across the sky to kill children
And through the streets, the blood of children
Ran simply, like children’s blood does.

I have seen the blood
Of Spain rise up against you
To drown you in a single wave
Of pride and knives!

Generals
Traitors
Look at my dead home
Look at broken Spain –
But from each dead house
Burning metal shoots out
Instead of flowers.
From every shell-hole in Spain
Spain will rise.
From every dead child a rifle with
Eyes will rise.
From every crime bullets will be born
Which will one day find a place
In your hearts.

You ask “Why doesn’t your poetry
Speak to us of dreams and leaves
Of the great volcanoes of your native land?”

Come
See the blood along the streets
Come see
The blood along the streets
Come see the blood
Along the Streets!

Nazi Germany supported the uprising and tried out its new air force in bombing raids against those regions of Spain still controlled by the Popular Front. ‘IT’S NEW’ … ring any bells, as in Gaza vis a vis the Israeli Occupation Forces and its modern technology!

The fascist uprising succeeded and General Francisco Franco became dictator of Spain until his death in 1976. Yes, the mid seventies!

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland supports its ‘strategic partner’, Israel, in its war on the military occupied land of Palestine in Gaza, content in the knowledge that its partner is showing ‘restraint’ in its military actions against defenceless civilians.

To date, as a result of the ‘restraint’ shown by the Israeli Occupation Forces, only a minimum of 34,183 killed, 77,143 wounded and at least 11,000 missing.

Yes, RESTRAINT! Prime Ministers, Cabinet Ministers, First Ministers, Members of Parliament, Lords and Ladies, Bishops and Pastors, Preachers and Biblical scholars, along with …

Generals
Traitors
Look at my dead home
Look at broken Gaza –
But from each dead house
Burning metal shoots out
Instead of flowers.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Guernica 1937

(Both called Pablo, both died in 1973)

Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord! If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your ancestors for ever and ever“.

Would you ‘adam n eve it! A native Welsh speaking follower of the Jewish Yeshua, or Iesu, as we call him, shares part of his religious heritage with a bunch of murderous, racist, genocidal, fanatical, sociopathic Zionist politicians and white-settlers! In the book that the latter call ‘The Tanakh’ and we call ‘Yr Hen Destament’, an Israelite prophet called Jeremiah, who lived 2,650 years ago, uttered the above warning. His words, not mine: “I will let you live in this place” (ie Jerusalem).

BUT! Yes! There’s a ‘but’. ‘God’ makes possession of the ‘Promised Land CONDITIONAL (Deuteronomy 4:40) on his people obeying his commandments eg Do not shed innocent blood.

But there’s more! God makes it clear in Leviticus 25 that the Promised Land BELONGS TO HIM and him alone. His people are only ‘sojourners’. In other words, their stay is only TEMPORARY, even if they do obey all his commandments. Their ‘God’ is adamant: The Land is Mine, not yours!

Maybe the Zionist politicians. and their White Settlers partners-in-crime, need an urgent lesson in Tanakh studies.

For the record, the current Zionists are not ‘ancestors’ of the original Israelites. They disappeared a long time ago, leaving no title deeds with anyone to ‘God’s Promised Land.

An artist’s impression of Jeremiah

An artist’s impression of the sixth century ‘Fall of Jerusalem’.

“The rage that breaks a man into children”

The rage that breaks a man into children,
that breaks a child into identical birds
and then a bird into small eggs—
the rage of the poor
has an oil against two vinegars.

The rage that makes a tree break into leaf,
a leaf into unequal buds
and a bud into telescopic folds—
the rage of the poor
has two rivers against many seas.

The rage that breaks the good into doubts,
doubt into three similar arcs
and then an arc into unexpected graves—
the rage of the poor
has a steel against two daggers.

The rage that breaks a soul into bodies,
a body into dissimilar organs
and an organ into octavo thoughts—
the rage of the poor
has a central fire against two pits. (Cesar Vallejo)

Cesar Vallejo died in Paris, aged 46, in 1938

This night is irredeemable.
Where you are, it is still bright.
At the gates of Jerusalem,
a black sun is alight.

The yellow sun is hurting,
sleep, baby, sleep.
The Jews in the Temple’s burning
buried my mother deep.

Without rabbi, without blessing,
over her ashes, there,
the Jews in the Temple’s burning
chanted the prayer.

Over this mother,
Israel’s voice was sung.
I woke in a glittering cradle,
lit by a black sun.

Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938) I wonder what poem he would write for Gaza?

As Ramadan 2024 coms to an end, a Palestinian girl visits a family grave.: “But we, with a funeral song bringing home the dead …”
 

REFUGEE GOD

God has become a refugee, Sir

So:

Seize the prayer rugs from the mosque

Sell the church, which now belongs to someone else.

Sell the muezzin on the black market

Light the wicks of stars so they

Might light the way for wanderers

Even the father of our orphans can’t be found

Take them all away as well, sir!

(Rashid Hussein d 1977)

Gaza Homecoming February 2024

Rashid Hussein (1936-1977) was a Palestinian poet from Musmus, a village outside Umm al-Fahm. Like his contemporaries Mahmoud Darwish and Samih al-Qasim, Hussein was a ’48 Palestinian (that is, a second-class citizen of Israel). Educated in Hebrew and Arabic, Hussein wrote and translated volumes of poetry.

MASSES  – Cesar Vallejo

When the battle was over
And the fighter was dead, a man came toward him
And said to him: “Do not die; I love you so!”
But the corpse, how sad! went on dying.

And two came near, and repeated it.
“Do not leave us! Courage! Return to life!”
But the corpse, how sad! went on dying.

Twenty arrive, a hundred, a thousand, five hundred thousand,
Shouting: “So much love, and it can do nothing against death!”
But the corpse, how sad! went on dying.

Millions of persons stood around him,
All with the same request: “Stay here, brother!”
But the corpse, how sad! went on dying.

Then all the men on the earth
Stood around him; the corpse looked at them sadly, deeply moved;
He sat up slowly,
Put his arms around the first man; started to walk.…

Hugo Simberg The Wounded Angel