If you were penned in by a wall
Where bombs constantly fall
Where fear descends like a pall
Wouldn’t you rail against fate?

If you were penned in by a fence
And only protected by tents
If you were starved and afraid
How would you face your fate?

If your home was destroyed
And the future seemed null and void
And the smoke and dust that cloyed
Wouldn’t you want to escape?

Seventy-five years of Nakba
(This didn’t start last October)
Homes lost, bulldozed, destroyed
So much death.

Let the people of Gaza live
Let them eat and laugh and love
Once more among the olive trees
In the cooling Mediterranean breeze.

Yvonne Aburrow
22 April 2024
7am

This may not be a great poem but it arrived in my head this morning as I was waking up, so here it is.

If you are still looking away from what’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank: please look, please write to your MP, protest, sign petitions, donate, do whatever you can do to help. What’s happening is genocide and ecocide.