Nadezhda Mandelstam’s book  ‘Hope against Hope’ (1970) is a study of what happens when a society lurches out of control and begins to cannibalize its own citizens. The greatest weapon dictatorial governments have is to make everyone culpable. The ultimate consequence is a society where no one, not even the most powerful despot, has ultimate control.

No one can say “stop” and have order restored; the sickness is, by that point, in every cell of the body political.

It is the national version of original sin.

Nadezhda goes on to write: Anybody who breathes the air of terror is doomed, even if nominally he manages to save his life. Everybody is a victim – not only those who die, but also all the killers, ideologists, accomplices and sycophants who close their eyes or wash their hands – even if they are secretly consumed with remorse at night.

Every section of the population has been through the terrible sickness caused by terror, and none has so far recovered, or become fit for normal civilian life.

If nothing else is left, one must scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity.

Edvard Munch’s Scream 1893

Ode to Stalin (Stalin Epigram) November 1933 by Osip Mandelstam

This poem, which Mandelstam read to a small circle of friends, was reported to the authorities, leading to Mandelstam’s exile in 1934. ‘Been thinking – who is going to write an ‘Ode to Netanyahu 2024‘? Maybe I should have a go. Here is the ode that Osip died for.

We are living, but can’t feel the land where we stay,
 More than ten steps away you can’t hear what we say.
 But if people would talk on occasion,
 They should mention the Kremlin Caucasian.
 
 His thick fingers are bulky and fat like live-baits,
 And his accurate words are as heavy as weights.
 Cucaracha’s moustaches are screaming,
 And his boot-tops are shining and gleaming.
 
 But around him a crowd of thin-necked henchmen,
 And he plays with the services of these half-men.
 Some are whistling, some meowing, some sniffing,
 He’s alone booming, poking and whiffing.
 
 He is forging his rules and decrees like horseshoes –
 Into groins, into foreheads, in eyes, and eyebrows.
 Every killing for him is delight,
 And Ossetian torso is wide. (Tr. Dmitri Smirnov)

Another translation

Morning eyelash, don’t arise!
Give us our daily bread,
Lord…!

………

And at this cold hour, when earth

smells of to human dust and is so sad,

I would like to knock on all the doors,

and to beg I don’t know whom, forgiveness,

and to make little pieces of fresh bread

here, in the oven of my heart…!

(From Cesar Vallejo’s ‘Our Bread’)

And she who is parting with her sweetheart today –

Let her forge her pain into strength.

By the children we swear, we swear by the graves,

That no one will force us to submit.

Anna Akhmatova

       2. (from VII Secrets of the Craft)

I have no use for battlefield odes,
And the charms of an intricate elegy.
For me a poem must be impromptu—
Not a matter of tradition.

If you only knew what kind of trash
Poems shamelessly grow in:
Like weeds under the fence,
Like crabgrass, dandelions.

An angry shout, the smell of fresh tar,
Mysterious mildew on the wall—
And a poem begins sounding fervent, tender,
Making us all joyful.

Part of pallet fence at Oak Tree House

The Last Toast

I drink to the ruined house,

To the evil of my life,

To our shared loneliness

And I drink to you –

To the lie of lips that betrayed me,

To the deadly coldness of the eyes,

To the fact that the world is cruel and depraved.

To the fact that God did not save.

Anna Akhmatova 27 June 1934

WILLOW (Anna Akhmatova 1940)

And I grew up in patterned tranquillity,

In the cool nursery of the young century.

And the voice of man was not dear to me,

But the voice of the wind I could understand.

But best of all the silver willow.

And, obligingly, it lived

With me all my life; it’s weeping branches

Fanned my insomnia with dreams.

And – strange! – I have outlived it.

There the stump stands; with strange voices

Other willows are conversing

Under our, under those skies.

And I am silent…As if a brother had died.

But the fir tree forest and the rushes in the pond

Answer with a kind of strange echo …

Oh, if I’m waking the dead,

Forgive me, I can’t do otherwise:

I grieve for you as for my own,

And I envy anyone who weeps,

Who is able to weep in this terrible hour

For the one who lies in the ravine’s depth …

Anna Akhmatova (1938) …

Anna Akhmatova – Russian poet

I wonder if he will grow-up to be a Palestinian poet?

Yes, the garden at Oak Tree House, has fir trees, a pond and a babbling brook. Yes, I do feel guilty, some days, living in the security and beauty of this ‘little-Eden‘.

AGAPE (CESAR VALLEJO, 1918)

Today no one has come to inquire,

nor have they wanted anything from me this afternoon.

I have not seen a single cemetery flower

in so happy a procession of lights.

Forgive me, Lord! I have died so little!

This afternoon everyone, everyone goes by

without asking or begging me anything.

And I do not know what it is they forget, and it is

heavy in my hands like something stolen.

I have come to the door,

and I want to shout at everyone:

—If you miss something, here it is!

Because in all the afternoons of this life,

I do not know how many doors are slammed on a face,

and my soul takes something that belongs to another.

Today nobody has come;

and today I have died so little in the afternoon!

Bibi Neten-yahoo is a modern-day Elijah, a messenger of doom, thirsting for the blood of his God’s enemies.

Bibi, the modern-day pseudo-prophet, who knows nothing of the divine truths in his own ‘holy-book’ or Tanakh.

Bibi, the leader of a ‘backsliding’ nation – just as in Biblical days – committing unforgivable crimes, as it pursues the relentless devastation and destruction of a whole people.

Bibi, patron and paragon of Zionism’s ruthless depravity and brutality.

Bibi, the perfect personification of Jewish Zionist piety, busy promoting a failed political entity and state.

Bibi, a sad, tragic figure, a lost soul, on show for the whole world to see.  A failed leader, clearly mentally-ill and emotionally disturbed, and possibly beyond redemption …

It is an abomination for kings to commit wickedness, for a throne is established by righteousness.” Proverbs 16:12.

And today, 24 July 2024, this abomination is celebrated in a corrupt conniving congressional circus in Washington DC.

Let’s not give this crowd of clapping political clowns the last word. Listen to the Ignored One, marginalized by most of our leaders to this day: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God’ …

What happened to that child within you, Bibi? What happened, indeed?