No Qualms even as things get worse…and worse? Poems by Michael Rosen

JVL Introduction

Michael Rosen has the amazing ability to write in the immediate wake of events. He published the first poem, on Facebook, in the early hours of yesterday and the others today, sent in also as comments to a piece that we had published on the arrest of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and the destruction of Kamal Adwan Hospital for which he was the Director.  The first is arguably “tongue in cheek” as well as serious;  the others are more sombre. We are pleased to share them with you.

LL

Tonight I’m thinking about ‘qualms’.
I’ve been in meetings when people have said they had ‘qualms’ about bringing in ‘measures’.
Or they had qualms about expelling someone from school.
‘Qualms’ are quivers of disquiet
when you feel queasy.

I thought that people would have qualms about Gaza.
I thought that after people agreed how fair it was
to bomb Gaza
there’d be a point when it would all look so bad
they would say, ‘I’ve got qualms’.

Maybe the problem is where can they have qualms?
Where can they say they’ve got qualms?

If you’re Jewish,
then you find that the two main Jewish newspapers
don’t have much room for qualms.
Every now and then there’s a Rabbi
who has a paragraph or two of qualms
but only after he says that what’s going on is understandable
and necessary.
Then, after that, he squeezes in a little qualm.

Most of the time,
the columns are filled with the qualmless.
The no-qualm sort
fighting the good fight from their keyboards.

But where are the qualms?
Are they hiding in cupboards
afraid to come out
in case they’ll be accused of being self-hating?
No one wants to be accused of having
self-hating qualms.

After they’ve explained
how it’s all necessary
and it’s all the other people’s fault,
do they catch sight of the flattened cities
the terrified, scarred and bleeding people?
The tik tok films of laughing soldiers
grabbing the innards of people’s flats, cupboards
and drawers.
Is there then a moment
when they wonder, ‘Is that what we should be doing?’
(because for years it has always been ‘we’).

But then, perhaps
the qualm is put back in the cupboard,
and reassurance comes
when someone says that it only looks bad
because people who hate us say it’s bad.
It’s not really bad.
it’ll all work out in the end.
It’ll all work out in the end.

Michael Rosen

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On the destruction of Kamel Adwan Hospital and the arrest of Dr. Hussan Abu Safviyeh (1)

What’s worse than worse?
It was months ago
they said that
that things had got worse.
But then they said things got worse
after that.
And then they said things were getting worse
last week.
And things got worse than last week
yesterday.
And things are worse today
than yesterday.
And things are worse now
than a moment ago.
It’s always worse.
It’s always getting worse.
When does it get to a point
where it can’t be more worse?
When does it get to a point
where worse becomes
the worst?

Michael Rosen

On the destruction of Kamel Adwan Hospital and the arrest of Dr. Hussan Abu Safviyeh (2)

How normal can they try to make it
that at this very moment
we are waiting to find out
whether a hospital doctor has been arrested
or is being incarcerated
or being hurt?
How difficult can it be
for the authorities to tell us
what is happening to the hospital doctor?
How much doubt and mystery
can they spread about this moment
so that enough people in the world
might think that the hospital doctor
is a terrorist in disguise as a hospital doctor?
How many social media posts
can announce that the hospital doctor
is dangerous
because he has treated terrorists,
as if it’s the job of hospital doctors
to prosecute, try and sentence people,
so that, if they find someone guilty,
they should leave them to die?
How normal is this
that we watch this
and the story should leave us
being suspicious of the hospital doctor
and thinking that the army officers
who’ve ordered the hospital doctor
to be arrested
are doing good things?

Michael Rosen