Poem for Gaza: Young are the Dead

By Pete the Poet

6 August, 2014.

Pete read this poem on 2 August, 2014, to an audience in Exeter UK attending the naming of the dead Gazan children, killed by Israel’s illegal Operation Protective Edge.

Gaza children.

YOUNG ARE THE DEAD

(after the American bombing of a nursery school in Iraq)

Young are the dead

Like babies they lie

The wombs they once blessed

Are barely healed dry,

And yet so soon

Into each new space

The warm earth falls

On a fresh cold face,

Dug fast by fathers

The least they can do

As older brothers chant

War pledges renewed,

Quite still they lie

Clutching their beads

Wrapped for their journey

These new winter seeds

Will not bloom

When called by spring

To burst into leaf

And bold blossoming,

They will sleep on

In silent dust

As mothers wail

And our memories rust.

Iraqi baby.

Save the children names the dead, and their ages.