It is tragically ironic that many of the survivors of widespread persecution in Europe and the Holocaust in particular, and their relations and descendants, the Israelis, have themselves become persecutors in Israel/Palestine.

"It is a strange story: some might say

Beyond belief, that a people who

Suffered persecution

Would so soon become the torturers

Of others."

Not all Israelis support their government's policy, but opposition is difficult. Many Jews outside Israel feel a deep anger and shame about what has been done is being done to this day in Palestine to the Palestinians.

Felicity Currie is herself a Jew and she makes her feelings and views plain in these three powerful  and complex poems.

Once more unto the breach…

1

Once more the con of that debasing call

Thralls us to savagery.  The right to kill

Is ours.  Of course - for west is best of all

And east is east, the least, the beast that will

Devour, devalue what our God made good:

Like us, the way we are, our sovereign greed.

Call it democracy.  That, understood,

Translates bloody rapacity as need.

Once more, again, forever, that word breach

Defines us: breach of promise, breach of trust…

We practise every breach our leaders preach -

Keep captives safe for torture and for lust.

Our noble dead live on enshrined in fame;

Theirs rot without a number or a name.

2

I'll tell you what I call a breach of faith:

A Jew by birth and nurture, I believed

That Zionism meant the promised land

For Jew and Arab working hand in hand.

Now, as I dare to say I was deceived,

I face each night my father's vengeful wraith.

Well, let me be a traitor to my race.

The truth has to be told by Jews like me:

I see an Israel with a Nazi face,

A Lebensraum as plain as plain can be,

The victims of the Holocaust betrayed,

Invoked to justify that crime remade

You take the name in vain.  Hear, Israel!

It's your barbarity that makes our world a hell.

Felicity Currie

The quality of mercy

Think dark.  Dig deep.  Now throw away the soil

That masks and marks the meanings we have lost:

Mass graves of wormy words.  No flesh and blood -

Worn origins of speech, maimed skeletons

Of a species with a bastard progeny:

What's left of language.  Prodigal, undead,

Not mute but mutant.  How it twists and turns

To uncreate!  We say not what we do.

Take mercy (having lost it).  Take the trail

That leads abusers to a resurrected ghost.

The thing we killed may yet be understood -

Not felt, perhaps, by brute automatons,

But sensed as concept, essence, quality,

Like-whatness.  Ghost with ghastly tale unsaid,

A word unmeant for kindness justly earns

The right to say its truth, if not to make it true.

"I have known what it is to be loved,

            Cherished:

I am first-born.  If meaning is lived,

            Nourished,

As the scion whose sign spells the blood

            Of the breed,

Those core values ingested as food

            For a Creed,

I am worth your belief.  More than good

            I am goods.

Where's the mercy in merchandise, then?

            Vanity!

I call merchants and mercenaries men -

            Humanity.

Find a place where no pitiless barter

            Flourished;

Or a time when no pitying martyr

            Perished;

Or a word that could turn the world round

            In a flash -

Changing goods into good, telling power

            Of pity,

So that arms become alms and the poor

            Run the City…

Merci!  Give me my money's worth.  My pound

            Of flesh."

2

How rare to coin a word that finds us out,

That absolutely tells us as we are:

Creators of a language that can lie,

Letters to kill the spirit that gives life,

To spell the grossly human as humane -

Converting goods to good.  Our crudest scam

Is mercy: now, as in its history.

For mercy has no pity; leaves no doubt

Our hearts are tangled in its roots.  As far

As Latin takes us back to base, we try

In vain to conjure harmony from strife.

Somehow the Church chose mercy to explain

Commerce as pity: whether to bless or damn

The good of goods remains a mystery.

            But why?  Why?

How can we live and let the word lie

            Counterfeit, sullied?

It's not as if a hellish void

Had to be harrowed for a reborn

            Sanctified word:

The fifth Beatitude unheard

            Unspoken, torn

From utterance, unmade

Unless mercy vouched it valid.

            Jerome trusted

Misericordia, bonding the human heart

With pity.  Why have we lost it?

The lost is not found if we start

From a coinage like mercy.  They knew -

They must have known, those holy scholars -

The word was murky.  Murky as hell.

False coin, cruel hire, rotten bribe, hard sell;

Pay as punishment, interest now due

In the currency that kills - mercy as dollars.

3

Shakespeare - you should be living at this hour:

To see a world that vindicates your choice

Of rampant, racist, mercenary power

As local habitation and as voice

For mercy.  And the burning question's this:

"Which is the merchant here and which the Jew?"

This is to be or not to be - what is

And what is not.  It's either me or you.

Which is the Jew and which the terrorist?

Who spits upon the Muslim gaberdine?

Who calls upon the godly to enlist

In dirty wars against those deemed unclean?

The quality of mercy's here to stay

In Gaza, Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay…

And yet

There's something in these words that makes us yearn

To find a time, a culture and a home

That honour them in practice.

                                To forget

That language never works to make us learn

To live by any selfless paradigm.

The poetry holds.

                     The centre falls apart

As it is surely meant to, even in speech

That seems so lucid in its certainties.

Why such a melody?  Why so much art

To woo a currish reprobate?  To reach

A beast remote from human sympathies?

This 'mercy' isn't meant to turn a Jew

Into a kosher Christian.

                          Mockery.

The Jew's a hostage to the Christian need

To bless and sanctify the mercantile -

The good of goods, fair trade;

                                romantic argosies

That fleece uncultured distant shores for gold

"And many a purchas'd slave".

                                This sceptred isle,

This mercenary land, this gentile breed

Engenders profit free from usury.

God bless the myth of capital, the true

Blue blood of murder: mercy bought and sold.

4

If there is gentle rain, it falls upon

Contaminated ground: deaf ears and hearts

Of stone - yes!

                           Pitiful oxymoron

For humans made inhuman.  And what hurts

Is how we find the words for callousness,

Cast them adrift as clichés with no bite.

Who gives a damn?

                                  What's all the fuss about?

Slaughter of Innocents?  Who could care less?

A plea for mercy hits the target when

That place, the place that hurts, is named and shamed:

Deaf ears and stony hearts of "temporal power".

Shakespeare turns

                     unbelievably, amazingly

From demonised murderous Jew

To "the mighty", the few

Who rage against the many -

                                heartbreakingly

Posits a superpower that can be tamed,

Might surrendered for 'mercy'.  Every hour

Of time's potential butchery redeemed.

                                        What then?

A tale, a different tale, told by a poet

(Idiot?)

Singing of mercy, pity, clemency

(Music of an eleison)

Where there is only sound and fury, still

And always signifying nothing.

"It is enthroned in the hearts of…"?

Let's start with Nero.

Seneca found him the model of clementia,

                                        aged eighteen.

So merciful he wept to put his name

To the death warrant of two thieves.

"Would I had never learnt to write",

                                         he sobbed

And wrote it.

(Jesus saved one thief upon the cross.)

You could say Seneca was not to know

His protégé might not turn out to be

The prototype of mercy.  Even so

It would be comforting to think that he

Felt just a little queasy when he wrote

To justify (before a fussy senate)

The gory end of Nero's mother.  Note:

Nothing survives to say he wept to pen it.

Not so for Shakespeare's merciful Queen Bess:

Left Mary Queen of Scots for twenty years

Plotting in prison.

                    Then, under duress

(No doubt), and mindful of the fears

Of her dear subjects,

                          finally got rid of her -

Sanctioned the murder

                        but withheld her signature.

5

Now we are graced by democratic tyrants,

Elected Neroes ratified by God

Corpsed by us in the flesh: Sharon and Bush.

The thing itself, immaculate, unst(r)ained -

The quality of mercy-killing.

                               Jew

And Christian in imperial harmony,

Showering their brand of gentle rain:

A global warring on the place beneath.

Iraq, twice blessed; lucky Afghanistan,

And biblically Judaic Palestine.

Poetry makes nothing happen.  True.

A Jew like me still needs to have a bash.

I'll tell it straight.  I'll lay it on the line.

It's time to ban

Commerce with Israel.

                        What god

Would ever have the chutzpah to bequeath

Another's land for pillage?

                              Hell's hegemony

Is rampant there, and we nod in compliance.

What role is there for clemency?  What hope?

Shakespeare led me to Seneca.  They share

This (crazed?) belief that mercy is conjoined

With power.  That it has to be.

                                Let's see.

Give peace a chance.  We've tried atrocity.

Vengeance, atrocity, savagery, madness.

Seneca's words

For a world where rulers do not

Show mercy.

Mercy is our word, our moneyed heir

To Seneca's clementia.

                        We've con-signed

Clemency (heartless conspiracy?)

To legalese or vagaries of weather,

If not to ignorant oblivion.

Now we need to remember our need

(In our want, our poverty, our meanness of spirit)

Of mercy as a word rich enough to express

The value of a good above all other.

Yes.  Our mercy, Seneca's clementia,

Defines, as only language can,

The quality of humanity.  The word

Is flesh, has substance.  We are

But walking shadows.

In the dim light where shadows rule,

Through a glass darkly

We scan an argument for the sovereignty

Of mercy.

Mercy chooses life: freedom of choice

The letter of the law can never have,

Judging not by the letter (sub formula),

But what is fair and good.

Justice can never be threatened

By mercy.

How can one virtue undermine another?

The opposite of mercy is not law

But lawlessness.  Barbarity, the power

That wields the sword because it fears it:

Pre-emptive violence, privilege

Of the axis of -

     superior weaponry.

A merciful ruler is unafraid

To let his 'enemies' go unharmed -

Recognising that they have the right

To claim an honest cause: a fight

For just beliefs and equal liberty.

Imagine all the people living free

If our Nerotic Bush had given pause

Before decreeing 'terror' Uncaused Cause,

And claiming mandate from his friend in heaven

For boundless vengeance after 9/11.

A merciful ruler doesn't even need

To feel pity.

Seneca discards misericordia

As a weakness that clouds reason:

Pity sees the plight, but not the cause.

Mercy and reason, like mercy and justice,

Are cognate virtues.

What about this, Necrose Sharon?

The wise and merciful ruler

(with tranquil mind and face under control)

Will inter the carcase of an enemy

Considered to be a criminal.

Who, then, was the criminal

That found no burial place for Yasser Arafat

In raped Jewrusalem?

Seneca posits a world

Where true happiness is the saving of life.

Not trophies wrenched from the vanquished

Nor chariots stained with barbarian blood.

This is mercy: the 'godlike' use of power

(We might prefer to call it 'human').

But he also foresees our world:

Not the quality of mercy, but its opposite.

Indiscriminate killing,

Conflagration and ruin

Starting small (maybe), but spreading

To the wiping out of nations.  

Genocide.

              WMDs.

Weapons of fire, flames hurled

Upon the roofs of houses,

Ploughs driven over ancient cities.

A show of power,

                     a ruthless shower,

A hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Felicity Currie

Optical Illusion

It was just the kind of day for feeling

Myself.  In myself, by myself, only

Me.  Looking outside

                        justified

Introspection: gunmetal sky

Waiting to download.  Already printed,

The pavement displayed its coat

Of many colours: radiant spew,

Takeaways almost as good as new

And dog shit…

                NO FOULING

Snarls the lamppost, with a punier note

Threatening fines for dog-owners.  Why

Pick on me?  I bag it up, fresh minted,

Every time (honest).

                        Just because I'm lonely

Doesn't make me guilty.  Anyway

What makes a dog's arse so much less appealing

Than a human mouth?  

                          We pick our way,

My dog and me, and it isn't him that's growling.

Now we've turned the corner.  That's when stuff

Gets better isn't it?  Look up, take heart

(If not give it):

                A change is gonna come.

I know too well the way before me.  Grim,

Grimy (decent) suburban road to a field

Desecrated most by those who'd never mark

Their sacred lawns.

                        Even as the wind whips

Rain in my eyes, I look for hope ahead.

Sure enough,

Distant, but so distinctly marked apart

From the normal blur in the bleary air,

I conjure up a Chapman work of art

Before I see the man in his wheel chair.

That's it.  I never thought my day would yield

A misery worse than mine.

                                What shits would park

A cripple on the pavement?  Get rid of him

By exposure - his, not theirs?

                                Is he dumb?

No strength to heave his protest to his lips?

No sign from houses close about him…

Is he dead?

Why can't I run to him?  Maybe disbelief

Or fear

Keeps me at normal pace.  Only my heart

Races.  Slowly new details surprise.

The mop of white hair so perfectly in place,

Groomed, even.  Untouched by wind or rain.

Is this man or woman?  Clothes not clear

Yet, but I sense the unnaturally smart,

New and clean.  Bright.  As if dressed

For an occasion in abandonment.

No harm done.  

                     If anyone has messed

With this old stick they've left no damning trace.

No foul play, as the gruesome saying goes.

Nothing that shows.

Dis-played here, a respectable demise

For all to see.  For me to see.  I'm here.

You want a laugh?  Some light relief?

This figure has no face.

No name, no sex, no martyrdom, no pain.

Only reality's dismemberment.

Stacked on the pavement, left against a wall

Right against a tree

Those barriers workmen erect

Around their caverns in the ground,

Festooned with painted stripes

Signalling danger.  But now

I walk straight through the space

And safely gaze

At where my cripple never was.

So my eyes deceived me.

Yet I suspect

A deeper, darker truth behind it all.

Horror and guilt that follow me around,

Wells of inner tears no pleasure ever wipes

Away.  I'm living in another place -

Because, because, because

My Jewish race

Fouls the earth of Palestine.  No matter how

I hide my eyes, that filthy image stays.

2

It is a strange story: some might say

Beyond belief, that a people who

Suffered persecution

Would so soon become the torturers

Of others.

Seeing is believing.  There is a child,

Iman al-Hams is her name.

Once her family lived secure,

Prospered, like others, in their homeland.

Now they are penned in ghettoes, branded

An inferior race.

Iman is thirteen, but undersized

She looks ten, at most.

Does she know, today,

Dreaming, perhaps, of a place to play,

That she has wandered too

Close to nightmare?  See how unsure

She looks.  Here are no nurturers,

Teachers, playmates, sisters, brothers.

Lost,

Stranded

In a savage desert wild

With 'human' beasts of prey

Who see the terror on her face,

She is the thing despised

And

Yet most prized -

Target practice, game for execution.

Soldiers of the Chosen People, (or

Is it the Master Race?)

Know an enemy when they see one:

Believing is seeing

And their Belief is always right.

They see a child, a girl they think is ten -

Small, anyway,

"Scared to death",

"Running defensively eastward".

But she's one of them, isn't she?

Once she would have been wearing

The yellow star.  Not a human being.

Someone shoots.  He has to.  Then

Herr Kommandant strides forward with his gun

Loaded.  That shot has made his day.

Now he's where he wants to be

Now he gets her face to face.

Now he can blast the breath

Out of her.  Watch every bullet tearing

Her apart.  Not just her.  Fight

The good fight.  In shooting her

He kills every 'terrorist' bastard.

He'd shoot her even if she was three -

Again, again, again, again…

How can a family mourn

Over a child's body torn

By seventeen bullets, with no hope

Of justice?  How do they cope

With a killer who will never bear the blame?

The murderer who dares not speak his name.

Just Captain R,

As in Rabbi.  Well, Captain R,

A braver world will find out who you are.

Some day, some time, someone will not stay dumb:

Some day, some time, A change is gonna come.

3

All that we see or seem

Is not a dream within a dream.

The thousands who have lost

Freedom of passage in their native land

Are Palestinians.  At roadblocks Jews,

Fascist dictators,

Marshall the daylong miserable queues

Of those they've beggared.  Subjected

Objects.  Does this strike a chord?

Ah yes!  'Oy! Oy! What music to the ears!

Look at this gonif with a violin!

Who does he think he is - a mensch like us?

What do you say?

Make him play

For laughs?  Something real nice and sad.'

(Like the Hatikvah?  I wish he had.)

Of course we do our best to understand

How lads under this daily stress get bored

With tame humiliation.

If power turned their heads, even affected

Their wits and made them imitators

Of those music maestros of the Holocaust,

They don't bring shame upon the Jewish nation.

There are no limits to the degradation

Legitimately,

Indiscriminately

Inflicted upon the stigmatised race.

Alive, it is a man playing a violin

Defiled in Nazi style.

Dead,

(But still a pleasure to deface)

A man's head

Is mounted on a pole;

A cigarette alight and fresh

Invades the mouth's corroded flesh.

Thus the sons of Belial

Reincarnate

Degenerate

In Israel

Can mock and thrust.

How satisfying to have found your role:

To smile and smile

(And be a villain)

And know your cause is just.

The dead head on the pole

(How many, Lord, how many?)

Has no voice, no identity.

The man who played

To jeers

Sad music on his violin,

Wissam Tayem,

Meant to be lost in non-entity,

Is known because a group of women

(Not just pacifists

But peace activists)

Have not forgotten how to be human

Among their brute bothers.

They shoot with cameras.  For them

The truth confronts the hideous doctrine

By which these Zion-Nazis stand betrayed -

"The Purity of Arms".  An ideology

Appears,

A codicil to Mosaic theology,

Eleventh Commandment: There is no toll

To pay; nor is there any

Law above the Jew's right to kill others.

Eyes for an eye.

You'd think the Holocaust would bring

An empathy with suffering,

Instead the Jewish State

Impelled by racist hate

Propagates the lie

Of Arab evil and aggression.

And so they take possession

Of land and more land

Knowing that the world will understand.

What nation can afford the error

Of unbelief in Muslim Terror?

Who has the Nuclear Power?

Who has the might of arms,

The tyranny of money?

Let's change places

Between the warring races.

Make America Iraq

And Israel Palestine.

Under attack,

Living on the breadline,

What defines a terrorist

And who denies the right to resist?

Funny

How the feeblest strike alarms

The occupying force, when hour

By hour they bomb and devastate

The lives of thousands.  

                        Let them wait

And tremble.  Every time a David meets

Goliath there's a twist of fate,

Some

Form in chaos that defeats

The primacy of force.

Of course

It may still be a dim and distant day

Beyond our vision.  But I hear the hum

Of mighty workings, and I say

A change is gonna come.

Felicity Currie

Copyright © 2005 Felicity Currie

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