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.

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