CURSE. In A Time of Endless War

Mallacht Dé Ort

(…from Ireland)

 

“we pray to the god of poetry”

(…from Palestine – Rafeef Ziadah)

 

Curse?

A child’s tears before the blows fall

In Mariupol or Khan Younis.

These laughing soldiers with their

teeth reeking of human flesh.

This small unborn baby, already emaciated.

A hundred thousand body parts stored in the

speechless rubble.

Another child’s terror drowning in daylight.

 

Curse is now the prayer promised

by both diplomats and presidents with

their handshakes that have starved thousands.

 

Curse is a name for the silence left

after all decent tongues are ripped out

and replaced with a madman’s microphone.

 

Curse?

These poisoned feasts of propaganda

the prime minister prepares for a famished people.

Curse them all / Mallacht Dé ort

Go dteachta na bréachra thú / May their lies

choke them!

 

Curse is the blessing we share in the dark

waiting for the next rocket to bring

the light back.

Mallacht Dé ort / God’s curse on you /

Go dtitfidh an oíche ort / May night fall on you.

 

Curse?

A pornography of missiles and shells

paid for by men in expensive suits and

delivered by their assassins and soldiers

to people who never wished to meet them

nor ever wish to meet them again.

 

Curse?

Curse them all

Mallacht Dé ort / God’s curse on you

That you may tire / Tuirse ort!

 

We pray, now,

(to the god of poetry).

 

Curse?

This war these maniacs call “peace”.

The one not happening as the building falls

in front of your eyes, on top of your head,

holding everything you held dear inside?

Mallacht Dé ort. That your own house may fall

 upon you / Go dtuitfeadh do teach féin ort.

 

Curse?

This siege also not happening

to a people starving.

Mallacht Dé ort. That you may be shamed and disgraced

/ Náire agus aithis chugat.

 

Likewise a deaf ambassador asking the radio

why we always blame them for crimes

they have not yet committed in a world

not even here yet?

Mallacht Dé ort. That you may never be heard of again /

Imeacht gan do thuairisc ort.

 

Curse their rabid country and their

demented leaders.

Their homicidal history and their respectability

smelling always and only of death.

 

Léan ort / May sorrow fall on you.

 

Curse their hatred and their need

for revenge.

Their handshakes, likewise, that have

strangled thousands.

 

Cursed their prayerbooks that sacrifice

these children on the altar of an ungodly arrogance,

their unholy rites and rituals lit like candles and

launched with apache helicopters and fire.

 

Curse?

Curse them all / Mallacht Dé Ort!

Nár chuire Dia ar do leas thú / May God

never grant you peace / agus / Droch chrích ort

and / a bad ending come upon you!

 

Curse?

Now here is a new name for a new day dawning

where children hunger in non-existent famines

while the parachutes rain hypocrisy on their small heads

dropped by the same dealers in bombs and death.

 

Curse then this business as usual:

America’s gift to the world.

 

Curse is the bus that will never take

us back to a home that is no longer there

as we set out on a journey that no longer exists

and with no way to get there?

Mallacht Dé ort. That you may leave without returning

/ Imeacht gan teacht ort.

 

Curse is the pain of sleepless night after night

waiting for a peace that never comes

or its sister, a violent death.

 

Briseadh agus brú ort / Strife and stress on you.

May weariness of heart fall on you / Lagú cléibh ort!

 

Curse?

These women screaming for their amputated children

their corpse-children, their ghost-children

who this latest Holocaust, (the spokesperson said):

“killed themselves, or were never killed or were killed

in self-defense”..?

 

Mallacht Dé ort / God’s curse on you.

Mallacht na baintrí ort / A widow’s curse on you.

 

Curse?

This religion of war: the new anthem for the Millennium.

 

Curse the trumpets summoning not angels

but the next generation’s killers in their ideologies

of fear and greed and hate.

 

Curse them all and their well polished speeches,

their circuses of atrocity blessed with the blood and guts

of everybody but themselves.

 

And curse now my own amputated arms too short to reach as far as the width of a room large enough to hold the enormous suffering of a people without a friend in a history without redemption and with no hope on the horizon to turn our faces towards…

 

Once, they said, it was better to

light a candle than curse the darkness.

 

Then the rockets came.

 

séamas carraher

6 – 21, march 2024

 

Image

Death of Yezan

Middle East Eye – March 8, 2024

 

NOTES

“we pray to the god of poetry

in every breath”

“In Jerusalem” – Rafeef Ziadah

Other Poems Performed by Rafeef Ziadah

…before the current genocide-in-progress

 

“A child’s tears before the blows fall

In Mariupol or Khan Younis”

“Show this Putin Bastard the eyes of this child”.

Doctor in Mariupol Hospital, Day 4 of the Russian invasion, February 2023

Mariupol documentary

Too many examples from Gaza, October 2023 – March 2024.

 

Likewise a deaf ambassador asking the radio

why we always blame them for crimes

RTE: Irish Ambassador to Ireland Dana Erlich

 

Curse is the bus that will never take

us back to a home that is no longer there

Listen to: Nothing Pleases Me – Mahmoud Darwish

 

Curse them all and their well polished speeches

Included in Al Jazeera Investigations / Documentary

…among other places

 

Irish potato famine Bridget O’Donnell

(Illustrated London News, December 22, 1849, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Irish_potato_famine_Bridget_O%27Donnel.jpg)

 

Curse?

Mallacht Dé Ort

Irish Curses – Irish Times

 

“Quarantine” Poem of the Irish Famine by Eavan Boland

(Read by Kevin Kennedy, Music by Finn Eces)

 

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