Elegy for Hungry Gaza
“And all the children
shall lie down in silence, and none shall wake them but the wind.”
I.
The Cry Beneath the Ashes
Gaza,
thy name is now a wound unhealed,
A page of fire no sea can cool or shield.
Thine olive groves are graves of ancient light,
Now trampled under drones and endless night.
Once bread was baked where songs were sung at noon—
Now ovens cold, and silence swells the tune.
Beneath
the shroud of smoke and shatter'd stone,
Half a million souls cry out alone.
“Catastrophic hunger”—not a phrase,
But lips too dry to whisper praise or raise
A crumb to tongue. A mother rocks her ghost—
A child she fed with hope, now famine’s host.
II.
The Ruins Remember
The
streets remember feet that danced and played,
Now rubble fields where limbs and names are laid.
Since Oct. 7’s black and bloody dawn,
When vengeance came and reason was withdrawn—
25,000 gone in Gaza's womb,
The land now mother, manger, and the tomb.
In
Israel too, the mourning candles burn,
For 1,200 never shall return.
Each side has wept, and war has made them kin
In grief, though not in justice, nor in sin.
Yet still the blades of war are drawn anew,
And mercy fades where rockets split the blue.
III.
Hunger’s Dominion
No
fig, no grain, no milk within the cup,
The soil starved, and time refuses to sup.
The date trees lean like mourners dressed in dust,
And water sings with poison, rot, and rust.
The aid ships wait, but gates are iron-shut,
And mouths bloom open like a wounded cut.
There
is no feast in Gaza, only fast—
A curse that binds the future to the past.
Children trace loaves on walls with bits of coal,
Dream meals that death erases from the soul.
And hospitals become the final bed—
For hunger feasts where angels fear to tread.
IV.
Of Hostages and Haunting
Still
buried deep within the city’s cry,
The captive moan, unseen beneath the sky.
One hundred thirty-six in shadow kept,
While nations watched and diplomats just wept.
And some—already lost—yet still unnamed,
Their stories swallowed, futures gone unclaimed.
And
soldiers too—five hundred souls and more—
Who marched on orders, now are lost to war.
On one day twenty-one were cast to flame,
A building fell, and none returned the same.
What price is drawn in blood and broken breath,
That makes a home of sorrow, war, and death?
V.
A World That Watches
O
West, who dines while children chew on sand,
Who counts the votes but not the bleeding hand,
Who funds the flames and sends the fuel with pride—
Where is thy conscience? Where does love abide?
You speak of law, of order, and of peace—
Yet justice dies, and mercy finds no lease.
Gaza
is not a battlefield alone—
It is a cradle cracked, a dying tone.
Its minarets, its churches, shattered eyes,
Its prayers now echoes lost in drone-filled skies.
Yet still it sings, though no one dares to hear—
A song of hunger wrapped in mortal fear.
VI.
The Elegy That Will Not End
O
Gaza, weep, but do not weep alone,
The earth must shake beneath thy starving moan.
Let poets rise, and prophets cry thy name,
Until the world can no more turn from shame.
Let every stone become a voice, a plea—
"Let bread, not bombs, befall my family."
There
is no glory in this endless grave,
No honour left for those who will not save.
Let ceasefire bloom where famine had its root,
Let children grow where once we buried fruit.
And may this elegy not be the last—
But the end of hunger’s brutal, burning past.
– In memory of all lives lost and all lives still waiting to live.
World Hunger Day — Gaza, 2025
-rs
