BONDI – a poem in response.
This is a response of mine to Bob Dylan’s “With God On Our Side” and an interview I watched with a remarkable minister and journalist Chris Hedges and his response to Bondi in the light of 20 people/children a day being killed by Israel in the West Bank/Ramalah and Palestine since the cease fire.
The cries from our sand,
Rise in one chorus.
Young men in their strength
Go, finish him off!
God’s on our side!
God’s on our side!
20 children die every day in Ramalah.
Shots sudden stoppage.
Silence descends.
A man and his son.
A picnic is buried
in blood and despair.
Heroes emerge.
“Great Aussie Spirit”.
20 children die every day in Ramallah.
The grief is like glue
It sticks us together
Untenable shock,
the darkness,
the fear.
A mother, a wife without any knowledge
A child only 10
A country withdraws.
20 children die every day in Ramalah.
Flowers as high as Mt Everest rise
Ever – rest we all sing
as the tears rush flow down.
The blame is now broadcast
Point scoring has shifted
From shooters of violence to
Prime Ministerial end point.
20 children die every day in Ramallah.
Hanukah dies,
the Holocaust visits.
A tribe is reborn
again and again.
The Exodus enlivens
the myths of salvation
While elsewhere and everywhere
20 children die every day in Ramalah.
Peter Breen
Peteskibreen's Blog 