In a tortured, split land, all suffer - Poem - Des Kahn

A man can make mistakes, 

but only an idiot persists

in his error                

Marcus Tullius Cicero 

They spent decades 

building lives of

bounty and meaning

only to lose it all

on an October day of

fateful surprise horror 

Now…

Many,

are interred in 

the soil they tilled

Some,

mouldering in dank

underground tunnels

survive…just! 

mere pawns

in a cruel chess game

where checkmate’s a 

rapidly receding option

Others,

bewildered

languish on

wound-burning 

salt flats of a

dead sea itself 

rapidly receding  

Most,

refugees in a once

safe-haven wander

aimlessly in homes 

of gracious distant

hosts — 

whose grace

grows smaller as

their loved ones 

hunker down in

bulletproof vests

that may or 

may not 

safe-keep their 

homecoming 

***

Across a rusty fence

blinding sand grains

smother the sky 

Sirocco blown or

exploded into being,

they curtail 

human breath

Red and white 

gingham keffiyehs,

powerless to protect

Huddled in rubble

women wail and

orphans kick balls

in attempts to 

regain childhood lost—

deferring for a moment

a lifelong trauma 

that may not survive the 

next phantom payload

Refugees born into a

refugee lineage with 

no place to hide

no place to live

***

The dusty gusts

impervious to the

sovereign claims of

limping lives both 

sides of the divide

move the dunes

despite man-made 

demarcation 

Stench lines the trench

And then…!?

Avenge!? …  Revenge!? …

I’m right!

You’re wrong!

I need you to

lie down

and die

so I can live 

in full

blinkered

catastrophe

My narrative,

written in ink—

is true and just

Your lies, 

written in blood—

infertility’s dust

When will We-all

see how in your 

destruction I

destroy myself

When will We-all

roll up the fence 

to curtail the

cruelty continuum

of this tortured 

fractured land 

bathed in the

tenuous torment of

personalities split

Des Kahn

15 September 2024, Sunday

I spent more than 17 years of my life in Israel.  

Firstly, as a Six Day War volunteer in 1967 and then, from 1970 I lived, worked, raised children and served in a frontline unit—firstly in the regular army and then as a reservist when needed to help defend the people I loved and the country I lived in (Golan Heights 1973; Lebanon 1982).

Many of my closest friends still live there. They are like-minded and actively try to preserve the rapidly receding values and character of the state of Israel. 

October 7 sent them, as it did most members of Jewish communities around the world into discombobulated shock. My Israeli friends, enshrouded in trauma, live in fear for their grandchildren now serving in Gaza, on the Northern border and in the West Bank. 

They believe in democracy and protest against the insidious efforts of the current government to undermine it. They believe in the supreme value of human life and are out on the hustings protesting against the government’s abandonment of the remaining living hostages. 

Sadly however, many of them, like most Israelis I have spoken with since that terrible Saturday in October last year, find it increasingly difficult to find compassion for the women and children of Gaza who also bear the brunt of this conflict.

The poem expresses my increasing moments of despair at the cruelty inflicted by both sides.