It’s all about the gold.
Hasn’t it always been?
The allure, the beauty of gold
in whatever form it takes —
wealth, power, fame, ironclad security.
In Gaza the rush is on.
Tanks, bombs, missiles, drones
won’t let humanity stand in their way.
The streets are packing up and fleeing
surging rivers of blood, of tears.
In the rubble washed up and left behind,
you can hear the slowly fading beat
of hearts no hands may ever reach,
Faint, trapped voices are crying out
for someone to save them,
but nobody comes,
and nobody comes
to lift their final breath
from an all-consuming silence
in which the bell of a crushed bicycle keeps ringing.
Even the Earth is lamenting,
even the Earth has a heart,
a center of explosive empathy
for those whose lives have been stilled
by the colossal hands of Israel.
How is what they do that different
from what the Nazis did in Warsaw
by sealing up half-a-million Jews
inside Poland’s largest ghetto
where thousands starved to death?
How can they do these things
and call what they do a just response,
a necessary retribution
carried out with grim delight
of the sort the torturer takes?
There is not enough light in the sun
nor in heaven’s fabled solarium
to extinguish the darkness
burning a hole in humanity’s heart
now that Gaza is falling apart.
When they lug away the rubble
and incinerate the bodies,
will they find a sign of God’s grace —
something rare and more magical
than the powers of King Solomon,
perhaps a shimmering golden lake
fed by springs from the world to come,
God’s way of saying thanks, Israel,
for showing no mercy
in the execution of your wrath?
When their killing spree is through
and the land they covet is finally theirs,
its people once again dispersed
or turned to ashes in a smoldering wind,
I foresee a different fate
for Netanyahu and his whole damn crew
of killers, sycophants and enablers.
With a nod to Dante Alighieri,
I condemn them to boil forever
in rivers of blood, rivers of tears.
As for the gold, it’s there alright,
shining for all the world to see
in the eyes of the people of Palestine,
in their hearts, their souls,
their hunger for freedom —
the spirit of resistance.
May it live forever.
George Capaccio is a writer, poet, and performer now living in Durham, North Carolina since migrating from the Boston area. Beginning in the 90s, his concern for the people of Iraq under U.S.-imposed sanctions led him to make numerous trips to Iraq as a witness to the effects of these sanctions. At home, he advocated for their lifting through writing and public speaking while raising funds for families in Baghdad whom he knew and with whom he continues to stay in touch.
