Saturday, 7 June 2025

Two new poems for Gaza - a) Keir Starmer and the 'Massacre of the Innocents''; b) No Famine

 Keir Starmer and the 'Massacre of the Innocents'

Keir Starmer was asked today

what he thought about 

the moment in the Bible 

when King Herod ordered that all the male

infants should be killed.

Sir Keir was forthright in his condemnation.

He said this cannot and will not be tolerated.

One interviewer asked him 

why then had he authorised the selling of swords

to King Herod which could  then have been used

to kill the babies,

to which Sir Keir replied

that was an outrageous accusation

and that he and his colleagues had strained every sinew

to restrain Herod 

and that the record stood for itself.

Then, 

when he was asked 

whether these deaths of innocent people 

could be called a 'massacre'

Sir Keir replied, 'It's not for me to say.

and that it's not helpful to call what's been going on

“The Massacre of the Innocents”.’

And Sir Keir left to spend more time straining his sinews.




No Famine


After there are no Palestinians left

in Gaza

Prime Minister Ben Gvir will climb through

the rubble and ruins,

turn to the one certified

ratified and licensed cameraman

permitted to enter Gaza

and say into the camera,

'What famine?

There's no famine here.

You can see with your own eyes

there is no famine.'

And the fact-checkers will pore over

the footage 

and after a week of sifting through the evidence

they will announce 

that they saw no evidence 

of famine

and will therefore have to conclude

that there is no famine.

When someone points out

that if there are no people 

then it is to be expected

there would probably be no famine,

Prime Minister Ben Gvir

will say 

that this is

echoing Hamas propaganda

and is a typical antisemitic way

to undermine Israel's achievements.

There'll be headlines in the papers

expressing outrage at 

how Israel's Prime Minister has been exposed

to vicious antisemitic attacks,

and back in Gaza

(now renamed the Riviera)

the camera will pan across the scene

of wreckage and ruin

behind Ben Gvir

and close in on a crow

that seems to have found a bit of carrion

which it's tearing at with its beak

and for a split second

the world wonders if it's watching a crow

eating a dead person's finger.