Gaza – poem – ‘A velvet spiral clothed the earth’
A velvet spiral clothed the earth
where dust and ashes fluttered down.
While tear stained eyes foresaw the dawn:
the shadow of a dearth of love;
and fear is all we own…
© Andrew Pratt 2025.
The rubble and the language – words for our time, for Gaza
The rubble and the language,
discarded, damaged lives,
are things that evil scatters;
no hope of love survives
when narcissistic grasping
eradicates all grace,
if protest sinks in silence
love leaves our human race.
Bereft of all compassion,
with empathy stripped bare,
humanity extinguished,
while people suffer there;
this world is desecrated
can we not find a way
to heal and mend relations
to counter this decay.
With hatred running rampant,
while sinking in despair,
is there no other option
to clear this rancid air,
to open doors to trusting,
to take the risk to dare
to find a new beginning,
through action, kindness, prayer.
Alternative last 4 lines:
From warring words and venom
could we at last relent,
or still continue headlong
to hell to which we’re bent?
Andrew E Pratt (born 1948)
Words © 2025 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.
Notes
This is probably best used as a reading. No tune is offered, though, being metrical it could be sung – as a protest song (or a hymn?).
Extravagant horror, beyond our conceiving,
the rain of this terror confounds our believing,
the thunder, war’s lightning, once deaf’ning, then blinding,
has sculpt human madness, to hell we are sliding.
Humanity harbours such hidden aggression,
the need to reap vengeance to counter oppression,
the screams of the innocent, tears of depression,
white noise of the agony, warfare’s obsession.
And now hope is lost, there is no compensation,
no sense of relief for each people, each nation,
some milit’ry folk will admire each citation
while leaving the children in wild conflagration.
© Andrew Pratt 30/9/2024
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
hymnsandbooks 