Love and Genocide

As we watch the planet burn, as we witness the ongoing crime of crimes, as our screens are flooded with the latest vile utterances of men who have never loved, who gloat about hate and destruction; spiteful men for whom annihilation of people is fun and profitable, we ask again: how do we remain open to love, to joy, to each other?

While solidarity grows and movements emerge, if our outrage, our rage, our disbelief has nowhere to go, it begins to seep into our daily lives and affects our ability to stay open-hearted, to trust, to reach outwards. Relationships break down over mis-uttered words, questions lead to arguments, disagreements become attacks. We are all offended, triggered, traumatised.

Oh how good we have become at pointing fingers, at preaching values of ethics, of human rights, of care, yet when we are asked to be accountable, to be uncomfortable, we get defensive, we react, we shut down, we find exception.

This is what authoritarianism does: it exhausts, it makes us distrust, it makes us hoard, it closes our hearts.

We have written before about broken-heartedness, about love, about joy, about seeking light in dark times (all are linked below), so yet again, as we wrestle with despair, with anger, with a heart that wants to shrivel, we share some more poetry.

For poetry is medicine, it is food, it is light, it is love, it is fuel for resistance, an antidote to despair, it is one of our most exquisite technologies. Poetry reminds us that our heart is ours to protect, to nurture, to offer.

Words, Veronica Yates and illustration, Miriam Sugranyes

*****

Intifada Incantation: Poem #8 for b.b.L.
June Jordan, 1996

I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED
GENOCIDE TO STOP
I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED AFFIRMATIVE
ACTION AND REACTION
I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED MUSIC
OUT THE WINDOWS

I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED
NOBODY THIRST AND NOBODY
NOBODY COLD
I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED I WANTED
JUSTICE UNDER MY NOSE
I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED
BOUNDARIES TO DISAPPEAR

I WANTED
NOBODY ROLL BACK THE TREES!
I WANTED
NOBODY TAKE AWAY DAYBREAK!
I WANTED
NOBODY FREEZE ALL THE PEOPLE ON THEIR
KNEES!

Read the full poem here.

***

Detaining a Poem
Dareen Tatour, 2018

One day,
they stopped me,
shackled me,
tied up my body, my soul,
my everything…

Then they said: search her,
we’ll find a terrorist within her!
They turned my heart inside out—
my eyes as well,
rummaged through even my feelings.
From my eyes they drew a pulse of inspiration;
from my heart, the ability to sketch out meanings.
Then they said: beware!
She’s hiding weapons deep in her pockets.
Search her!
Root out the explosives.
And so they searched me…

Finally, they said, accusing me:
We found nothing
in her pockets except letters.
We found nothing except for a poem.

***

The Seventh Eclogue
Miklós Radnóti, 1944

[...]

I lie on a plank, among vermin, caged like an animal
As the fleas lay siege, but the flies at least have relented.
It’s night and, see, my sentence is one day shorter,
And so is my life. The camp is asleep and the moon
Shines on the world and the wires still bind us tight.
I look through the window and see the sentinels’ shadows
Patrolling a wall amid noises that drift through the night.

Do you see, dear friend, the camp is asleep and dreams
Are swirling around me as someone wakes up with a start,
Turns on his narrow bed and then drifts back to sleep,
His face lit up by a smile. Only I sit awake,
The stub of a spent cigarette in my mouth instead
Of the taste of your kisses and sleep still shuns me because
I neither know how to die, nor to live without you.

Read the full poem here.

***

“I am the night”
Joyce Mansour
Translated By Emilie Moorhouse

I am the night
This night of space frozen by the cold idiocy of the moon.
I am money
Money that makes money without knowing why.
I am man
Man who pulls the trigger and shoots emotion
To live better.

***

Untitled
Karim Wafa-Al Hussaini

my grandmother taught me
that the most heartbreaking thing
about war
is not that it destroys
nations,
cities,
or even civilisations,
but that it interrupts
mothers
singing lullabies
to their children.

See also: Poetry as Strategy / Breaking Open / No Time for Despair / Joy as Fuel

References and Further Reading

‘Intifada Incantation: Poem #8 for b.b.L.’ June Jordan, 1996. Read the full poem and more of her work here.

‘June Jordan on Palestine and American Delusions,’ Sherell Barbee and June Jordan, In These Times, 26 September, 2024. Read here.

‘Detaining a Poem,’ Dareen Tatour, 2018. Read more of her poetry here, and read ‘Resist, my people, resist them.’ A poem for which she was imprisoned, see here.

‘A Poet Behind Israeli Bars,’ Pen Opp / Swedish Pen, 24 March 2021. Read here.

‘The Seventh Eclogue,’ Miklós Radnóti. Written at Lager Heidenau, in the hills above Žagubica, in 1944 and first published in 1946 after his death. Read more about his work here.

‘The Seventh Eclogue by Miklós Radnóti,’ Nicholas Birns, EBSCO, 2022. Read here.

‘I am the night,’ Joyce Mansour, translated by Emilie Moorhouse.

‘Egyptian Enigma: Joyce Mansour.’ Marwa Helal, The Poetry Foundation, originally Published on 1 June, 2023. Read here.

Untitled, Karim Wafa-Al Hussaini. You can read more of his work here.

child of a stolen homeland, Poetry collection by Karim Wafa.

‘Finding Joy in the Face of Genocide,’ Soheil Malagutti, 3 August 2026, read here.

‘James Baldwin on Love, the Illusion of Choice, and the Paradox of Freedom,’ Maria Popova, The Marginalian, Read here.

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