Speak ill of the Dead (Gaza 2009)
They are the exalted birds and their intercession is required indeed
—Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
| Blitz By May 1941 | 43,000 civilians | many of them horribly | as cellars |
| filled with sewage | escaping from burst heads | heads that lay | with the corn dollies |
| of Dresden | whose skin grew vapid | as tubers of fire | and wind |
| whose horses were silhouettes | capering on sidewalks | of armour | and ashen ghosts |
| whose Pompeiis | cooked down | like stock | unstuck in Time |
| there in the rising | in the Thames | in the Elbe | the horses at night |
| they came to feed | of shadows | of the Dead | after night |
| a three year old | child | in Gaza City | dying |
| with a broken back | of rivers | running hard | into deltas |
| over two days | in the rising | through the Thames | of concrete |
| of heat | of her mouth | with petals | and song |
| filled with dust | on the green banks | folded aloft | in the arms |
| of mothers | of the history | of mothers | of the mothers of mothers |
| and of the baking | of bread | at dawn | and at the going down |
| of the sun | will we consume thee | thy flesh thy bread | of glory |
| as white phosphorus | as coins | they inserted | in the loaves |
| of an Intifada | like vast catfish | coins | for the raising |
| of the drowned | in dust | face down | now be still |
| do not fight | do not fight | as the horses fought | it will be over the sooner |
| into that glory | or thrust | upon shadow | and exalted aloft |
| upon high | in the upper air | and upon the heights | in cannonades |
| in loaves at dawn | they seek | the drowned | to ask |
| why one child | whose skins grew vapid | as tubers of fire | why one child |
| of another race | worth so many of hers | unable to move her arms | she who will never know |
| knows only of snow | and one catfish king | says Jim to Tom | of its taste |
| its cold soft iron | is much like another | much like one another | and all of it
no damn good |
