Up to Their Ears in Tears

Cherry

By Turlough

Wed, 02 Jul 2025
  • 752 reads
17 comments
 

 

Up to Their Ears in Tears

 

White bundle clung to a mother’s breast

The bleeding has stopped

As has the breathing

Carried on the wind across deserts

Her haunting wails of sorrow

For her land and baby Waleed

 

Al-Shifa hospital’s rubble arranged in piles

Supports a table that once was a door

Still bears ‘Maternity Ward’ in Arab script

No clean sharp knife. Without anaesthetic

Yusuf’s little-boy screams pierce the night

Amputating a foot, a surgeon weeps

 

Men in suits and power; some women too

Could stem the flow of children’s blood

Stop arms sales in the butchers’ bloc

Have they no hearts or ears at all

To hear outraged minds protest on streets

Those eighteen thousand infant deaths

 

Farah’s going to be a doctor

When she grows up

When they remove her bandages

When they rebuild the school

I wonder what does a little girl do

When she has no eyes to see or cry

 

Image:

A stop sign in Arabic and English. I took this photograph in Aqaba in Jordan in February 2022 on the day that Russia started its war with Ukraine. I thought it symbolic at the time, but maybe it wasn’t. Will they ever stop?

Certificate 15
Poem
Poetry in Commotion
Crime
Inspiration Point (work that responds to our weekly writing cue)

Comments

Submitted by Insertponceyfre... on

Intensely moving and yes, the photo is perfect. I wish they would too!

 

Submitted by Turlough on

Thank you IPFN. 

Ohh, it's always on my mind.

crying

Turlough

Submitted by David Kirtley on

A very fitting poem for the awful situation, which has already gone on for longer than anyone imagined, and is only getting worse and worse. How can it have come to this? And why is there no solution?!

 

Submitted by Turlough on

It shouldn't have gone on at all David. It should have been stopped decades ago before it even started. But now it has started it could be stopped with a cut in the supply of arms to Israel whilst severing all business and aid ties with them.

Above all, I can't believe that there are people in the world who would even contemplate committing such inhuman acts against fellow human beings.

Turlough

Submitted by Di_Hard on

Don't know what to say. Thought I might quote some lines, then realised it is the whole of every part.
What is it doing to everyone? Those in there, suffering death, injury, loss because of the inaction of those outside; those outside constantly aware of this horror going on, not understanding how it can be swept to one side by politicians who have the power to stop it; the money and time must be going into police investigations on what someone said to a crowd at Glastonbury. Priorities so skewed while massacre is tolerated as "regrettable, misguided"

I think you are right, not to spew anger as I do, but to give examples. To move hearts with your words, to remind that it is people the same as us.

 

Submitted by Turlough on

I don't know what it's doing to everyone else Di, but it's destroying me. I have to really concentrate on other things to keep my mind off the news reports and the images I've seen.

In the late 1970s when I worked on ships I went through the Suez Canal a few times. On the eastern shore there were burned out tanks and military aircraft that had been dredged out of the water after the Israel-Egypt war of 1973. I was still a wet-behind-the-ears teenager so it really shocked me to see these things and the bombed out buildings. Features of the landscape that evoked thoughts of nothing but carnage. And I still see those things if I'm not careful and otherwise distracted.

As you've mentioned yourself, it's terrible that currently people seem to be more outraged by a couple of music bands' comments on the genocide than on the genocide itself. I really can't understand.

Meanwhile, other wars are available... all over the world... and we've forgotten about them completely.

I am very grateful to you for sharing my point of view, and to everybody else who shares it. It doesn't help Gaza's problem but it's reassuring to know that there are people around who care about those horrific atrocities. And I'm very grateful for the words in your comment.

 

Turlough

Submitted by Di_Hard on

Recently I have been shaking so much, and don't know, wonder if it is thinking of this. It is the trappedness that makes it seem worse, being held prisoner till agreeing to give up what's yours, being encouraged to this end by starvation, no medicine, no water, targeted bombings that kill thousands outside the targets, and those doing so NOT decried as the ones causing such terror in Sudan and other dreadful conflicts, but still described as having shared values, being allies. The doublespeak, doublethink.

 

Submitted by Turlough on

Exactly! It's them being so-called allies that's so disturbing. It's a war like no other in that it touches our everyday lives. Every trip to Marks & Spencers, every cup of Costa coffee that we buy, every speech from the politicians that represent us, are all contributions to what fuels the horror of genocide. They're not my allies. I can never forgive them. Whether they're in Britain, Bulgaria or elsewhere in the world I will live the rest of my days detesting them.

And the entrapment. This is a different kind of war. A war from which there will be no refugee crisis because those poor victims have absolutely no way of getting away from it.  

I'm very sorry to hear that it is having such a bad effect on you Di. It is on me too. I can only console myself by remembering that what the Gazan people are experiencing is infinitely worse than my bit of stress.

Turlough

Submitted by w.w.j.abercrombie on

Hard hitting and thought provoking, I enjoyed this.

 

Submitted by Turlough on

Thank you very much indeed.

I'm very grateful to you for taking the time to read the poem and for leaving a comment.

It means a great deal to me.

Turlough

Submitted by skinner_jennifer on

You've written a sensitive poem Turlough, with honest compassion for those going through appalling, aggressive suffering.

I can only echo many others oppositions to such atrocities.

Jenny.

 

Submitted by Turlough on

Good on you dear Jenny.

Turlough

Submitted by Ed Crane on

at the hands of an extreme right nation can be hoodwinked into accepting a leader who has similar aims of wiping out another section of humanity. A leader who is so corrupt he is prepared to kill millions to prevent having to face charges against him.

The west shoiuld get over the guilt of the holocaust and put an end to this barbarism. It happened 80 years ago it SHOULD NEVER be allowed to happen again, regardless of who the perpetrator is.

Herr H committed suicide when he failed, I doubt Mar N has the cojones to do the same

Corrupt politcians are ruling the world stage now it seems. 

It makes me sick to my stomach.

 

 

Submitted by Turlough on

I agree with you entirely Ed.

We are constantly being brainwashed by the media. It seems that a huge chunk of the population of the so-called 'developed world' agree with the governments that support Netanyahoo but they do so simply out of ignorance. Britain and America, who have always been the 'goodies' because that's what happens in the movies and the comic books, must always be the goodies and any other opinion is obviously wrong. It's a combination of greed and racism that fuels this, as far as I can see.

Exterminating Sadam and Gaddafi, and imposing heavy sanctions on Russia are the sort of steps that would be America's obvious course of action in any other country apart from Israel. I don't agree with assassinations but I don't agree with a lot of things that the military are capable of so I can't understand why such an approach hasn't been adopted to end the horror in Palestine.  

There must be Israelis who know about the past and can see why they, of all people, shouldn't be committing such atrocities but are too afraid of their government to speak up. Israel is the sort of fascist nuclear state that they themselves warn the rest of the world about.  

With the possible exception of Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia, I can't think of anything more sickening that's happened in my lifetime. The victims in Gaza couldn't escape their country if they wanted to.

I'm very grateful for you words. I know that there are other people with the same opinion as me and reading about their thoughts reassures me that not everyone in the world is barbaric and evil.

Turlough

Submitted by Ed Crane on

The man who has shown wannabe despots around the world you can break all the rules of decency and no one does anything about it. He's a corrupting influence and his cancer is spreading. All the while  he is alive moral integrity will continue to decline.
 

This man is evil. 

 

Submitted by Turlough on

Agreed! Totally!

Turlough

Submitted by celticman on

stop indeed. I could say more but when do we stop talking and start doing?