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
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
“Quarantine” Poem of the Irish Famine by Eavan Boland
(Read by Kevin Kennedy, Music by Finn Eces)
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