Trophy of War Christmas (2023)

[FranktheFrank]

Trophy of War Christmas (2023)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-mid ... t-67755515 19th December 2023
Found
‘O hush tumult, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing.’
Hymn by: Edmund Hamilton Sears (1810-1876), It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.

Yarden Roman-Gat, an adult married woman
was abducted from Kibbutz Ber’eri, near
the border on the first Sabbath day of October
An attractive woman with strong facial features
She found there was no security in her kibbutz

as Hamas fighters invaded through the gates
and shot her mother in front of her face
Yarden ran from the house with her three-year
old daughter, Geffen, and her husband, Elon

They were chased and shot at by the enemy
She handed her child over to Elon, s good runner
He hid for twelve hours, Geffen so brave, he said
Carmel, Yarden’s sister also kidnapped, disappeared
Yarden was discovered pretending dead, but alive

Her captures dragged her over the ground
tearing her scantily clad pyjamas until
she was half naked. She was afraid their thoughts
would turn to that unimaginable of crimes
They displayed me, she said, like a war trophy

I was not a person, they looked at my face
as an object to display. Her constant anxiety
for those fifty-four days was for her child
her husband, her sister and her murdered
mother-in-law. He family home also destroyed

This is Israel’s open festering wound
the unthinkable is now the reality
if ever they become vanquished
The holocaust is never far from their minds
Like the women who survived the Russian

assault who then endured mass rape. Minds damaged
for the rest of their lives, their daughters and grand
daughters spread-eagled at the mercy of Satanic forces

Vain man, at war with man hears not the love song
that they bring, hush your hate you men of strife
and hear the angels sing

Ieuan ap Hywel

[BobBradshaw]

We all sympathize with the woman’s plight. However, the poem is too explanatory. Make me feel the woman’s horrors through her eyes, through specific images. Think Wilfred Owen. Think of Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch”.

For an example of too much explanation…

Her constant anxiety
for those fifty-four days was for her child
her husband, her sister and her murdered
mother-in-law. He family home also destroyed

This is Israel’s open festering wound
the unthinkable is now the reality
if ever they become vanquished

[FranktheFrank]

I've sent it off Bob, without much hope.
I can always cut back later.
This is a 'found' poem and I am using, in the main,
the protagonists words i.e. Yarden Roman-Gat.

[CalebMurdock]

Writing about atrocities is particularly difficult. Some subjects just don't lend themselves to poetry. I'm not saying you shouldn't try, though. The October 7th attack by Hamas was just such a horrifying thing that I have trouble even thinking about it.

Given the difficult subject, I think the poem is pretty decent. It reads a lot like prose, though; a bit like a newspaper account with a partisan slant. However, writing about such stuff with poignancy may be impossible. Poignancy is for smaller subjects. You might be able to put more poignancy into the poem if you focus on one death or one act of horror. I understand that large numbers of people (mostly women, the monsters) had gasoline thrown on them and were burned to death. Focussing on one such victim or act of atrocity might make a better poem.

Good luck to you.

[FranktheFrank]

Thanks for reading and commenting, Caleb.