A Lament for Palestine and Israel
Unknowing babies sleep now,
exhausted without food,
while mothers cry in anguish –
this lottery is crude:
when missiles, ‘with precision’,
seek targets, hid, unseen,
as leaders point the finger
so consciences are clean.
Amid this dust and carnage
where human life is cheap,
where body parts are scattered
we turn our heads and weep,
yet this is soon forgotten,
the image fades, has gone,
another channel chosen
we sing a soothing song.
In this we are immersed now,
our pain will soon be lost,
the anguished cries diminished,
we need not bear the cost.
A distant drum is beating,
we’re deaf to hear its sound
a tiny body buried ,
in seared, unhallowed ground.
And mothers still are sobbing
while fathers shed salt tears,
and lives are marked by hours now,
yet mem’ries seethe for years.
How long, O God, can terror
be harboured in a mind?
How long before Your children
are nurtured to be kind?
© Andrew Pratt 14/11/2023
Words © 2023 Stainer & Bell Ltd, London, England copyright@stainer.co.uk . Please include any reproduction for local church use on your CCL Licence returns. All wider and any commercial use requires prior application to Stainer & Bell Ltd.
Tune: NYLAND H&P 478II, REJOICE AND SING 529
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