This page picks up unpublished work and work in progress.
It wasn’t Jabaliya, that’s for sure.
There it was civilised; ordering people
out by megaphone, “You’ll be crushed
when bulldozers come to demolish
your homes!”. Some were. They’d sort of known
where they stood but thought some precious
things might, possibly, be saved.
Here, by the coast, in Shiyyah suburb
of Beirut, two missiles strike a block of flats.
And as the dust clouds disappear, the rubble
reveals a forearm and a bloody hand
clutching a week old baby choking her life
away in dust - the garment of her attackers’
victim hood. Her name was Waad,
now known around the world; Her mother Selwa.
And when her body’s disinterred, her husband
Ali at her side, her two small sons - Hussein, Hassan -
are clinging to her body like grim death.
Searching for a lamentation, an earlier
offering to the Lord for Yom Kippur -
wrapped up now in shock, tied off now with awe:
King David’s poignant tribute comes to mind -
“… lovely and pleasant in their lives, and
in their death they were not divided..”.