by Jim Aitken
For Ward Jalal Al- Shaikh Khalil
The whole world saw her silhouette
dancing through the flames of a school.
There was something ethereal,
some strange scene from a horror film,
of a girl running for her life.
Her image, presented as news,
a spectacle for the viewers,
was of a real flesh and blood girl
running from a bombed-out classroom,
of a girl running for her life.
Of a Palestinian girl
from Gaza running for her life
like so many other children
screaming, confused and bewildered
at the hatred for her people.
Yet her six-year-old twinkle toes,
a spectral presence in the flames,
ennobled a battered people
traumatised by indifference
as much as missiles and drones.
And the girl too is traumatised
at the world she was born into
but she will run and stand for life,
a real-life girl in a mad world,
childhood gone before it began.
Words United by Michael Rosen, a new book of poems mostly about the genocide, displacement and mass starvation in Gaza, is now available as an ebook here. All profits will go to Medical Aid for Palestine.
