by Bonnie Naradzay
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Israel has grandiosely labeled its latest genocidal move "Operation Gideon's Chariots" wherein, moving from siege to seizure, it plans the bloody conquest, ethnic cleansing, and permanent recolonization of Gaza, using the rhetoric of holy war to justify unholy mass destruction - this, even as many of the Palestinian children who've somehow survived their savage 18 months of carnage now slowly starve to death. Photo: Osama Al-Raqab, 6, is one of tens of thousands of Gazan children slowly starving. Screenshot from NBC. —Common Dreams, May 6, 2025 |
What kind of times are these,
asked Brecht, when a conversation
about trees is almost a crime
because it entails a silence about
so many misdeeds! And so
is it fitting to converse about
the ephemeral cherry blossoms
that graced the Tidal Basin trees.?
Elected felons spout obscenities.
“Have you no sense of decency,”
someone finally asked McCarthy.
I have grown numb to incivilities.
The Slaughter of the Innocents
continues again without a pause,
since Israel broke the ceasefire
two months ago and halted
all food, water, and medicine.
Yet people here are arrested
and deported for decrying
the deliberate slaughter
and starvation of the people
of Gaza, the burning of tents
in “safe zones” where
the displaced are sleeping.
Israel calls its war crimes
“Operation Gideon’s Chariots.”
What kind of times are these?
Yesterday, and again today,
for those still counting,
Israel detonated drones
and US-made bunker bombs
in Gaza, killing over 100
people each day; and 27
children were said to have
starved to death already today
you could count all their ribs
in these dark times
when we cannot see
the forest for the trees.
Bonnie Naradzay’s manuscript will be published this year by Slant Books. For years, she has led weekly poetry sessions at homeless shelters and a retirement community. Poems, three of which have been nominated for Pushcarts, have appeared in AGNI, New Letters, RHINO, Tampa Review, EPOCH, Dappled Things, and other places. While at Harvard she was in Robert Lowell’s class on “The King James Bible as English Literature.” In 2010 she was awarded the University of New Orleans Poetry Prize – a month’s stay in Northern Italy – in the South Tyrol castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter Mary. There, Bonnie had tea with Mary, hiked the Dolomites, and read drafts of Pound’s translations.
