Photo: By Davide Ragusa on Unsplash.
Poem: Gaza nocturne
'Avert your gaze: the animals are grazing and the herdsmen...'
Avert your gaze: the animals are grazing and the herdsmen
grave. Sleep not for the drone of angry hawks and fear not
for the threat of death, or worse. There are no pastures here
nor silences for the privilege of hope. The light is worse
than dark though the spark of life may flicker through each
deadly night. Those vast, those multitudinal audiences
sit in silence: stalls, balconies, gangways, stairs, corridors
packed to the walls with starers dumb with the drama
of this great stage, this vast and monumental act of power-
lessness. It is historic. It lives and breathes with the force
of destiny. It speaks to history inverted and to future moments
out in time. The deus ex machina1 is both faith and hope.