World without end: Gaza

I have seen the dead

Come back to life, or what passes for life.

They rise up blinking from the dust,

Faces pale, bewildered, unsure

What century this is,

And what place.

They confess to many phases of existence,

Binding one to another

Like pearls, like iron links,

Present, future and past

In one unbroken chain. 

‘We are not surprised,’

They say, ‘by what you report.

Your ancestors did things like this,

So do your descendants.

Often in fact they are more cruel,

More sadistic, more obscene.’

Nor, it seems, is the evil confined

To this troubled planet.

Unspeakable crimes are taking place,

In multiple domains, in the fecund darkness

Of this and other worlds:

Wherever the seed settles.

Terrible things. Annihilations:

Fathers mown down like ants, collecting food;

Mothers buried screaming under smashed concrete’

Children shot in the temple, the guts, the balls.

And these, the least of it.

‘But are we forgiven?’ I ask nervously.

‘I mean our species, the human animal?’

‘No, no, no one is forgiven,’ they tell me, smiling;

‘The virtuous, least of all, since they

Suffer the shame of the hapless onlooker

Who tried to help, but failed miserably.’

Who knows where any of this started

Or where it will ever end?

It is the stitch work of our history,

Our humanity and inhumanity,

Our shared delight, our common punishment.