Ode to Gaza Strip

Your strip is no longer a strip.

Like a stranger who is not

Sure of the street or the house,

Something takes life away

In the depths of what are ashes.

Glass trembles with every explosion

Which falls and sets it on fire.

A vast cry goes out to the islands,

Through a wounded doorway to the sea,

Marked with your raptured scarlet veins,

Which falls on a deaf ear.

You want to restore living in dignity —

Brutally rejected.

Sometimes when you stop being,

Stop coming and stop going

Under blankets of ruins

And the heavy feet of death;

Rise, my dear, rise

Like stepped on dust,

Maya’s dust.