Please note that the poems and essays on this site are copyright and may not be reproduced without the author's permission.


Monday 19 November 2012

Fear of Falling: Infinite Recursion


.

Look downstairs into stairwell whirl (looking over centripetal banisters, Marzahn, Berlin): photo by quapan (Karl-Ludwig G. Poggemann), 5 August 2008


It may be good like it who list
..but I do dowbt who can me blame
..for oft assured yet have I myst
..and now again I fere thesame
..The wyndy worde[s] the Ies quaynt game
..of soden chaunge maketh me agast
..for dred to fall I stond not fast
Alas I tred an endles maze
..that seketh to accorde two contraries
..and hope still & nothing hase
..imprisoned in liberte[s]
..as oon unhard & still that cries
..alwaies thursty & yet nothing I tast
..for dred to fall I stond not fast
Assured I dowbt I be not sure
..and should I trust to suche suretie
..that oft hath put the prouff in ure
..and never hath founde it trusty
..nay sir In faith it were great foly
..and yet my liff thus I do wast
..for dred to fall I stond not fast


Hase hazard, attempt
ure use



Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542): It may be good like it who list: transcription from original text (British Library Egerton MS 2711, fol. 22) by Richard Harrier in The Canon of Sir Thomas Wyatt's Poetry, 1975




Palestinian doctors gather to pray around the bodies of four children from the al-Dallu family killed along with seven other persons when an Israeli missile struck a family home in Gaza City, 18 November 2012: photo by Majdi Fathi / APA Images

"At least 11 members of one family, including five women and four children, were killed when Israel bombed a house in Gaza City on Sunday as the five-day-old war claimed more civilian lives with no sign of a let-up in the intense bombardment.

"The air strike flattened the home of the Dalou family in the Sheikh Radwan district of Gaza City, causing the biggest death toll in a single incident since the offensive began last Wednesday.

"On Monday morning the Israeli defence force appeared to admit the family had been killed by mistake. The Haaretz website quoted the army as saying their house was either incorrectly pinpointed or a missile malfunctioned.

"Elsewhere in the city early Monday an air strike levelled two houses belonging to a single family, killing two children and two adults and injuring 42 people, including children, said Gaza heath official Ashraf al-Kidra. Rescue workers were frantically searching for 12 to 15 members of the Azzam family under the rubble. Shortly afterwards, Israeli aircraft bombarded the remains of the former national security compound in Gaza City. Al-Kidra said flying shrapnel killed one child and wounded others living nearby.

"After the Dalou family home was destroyed, the bodies of the children were pulled from the rubble and taken to the morgue at Shifa hospital. The dead also included an 80-year-old woman.

"Diggers at the scene of the explosion were scooping rubble from flattened buildings as rescuers tried to locate survivors.

"Witnesses said there were chaotic scenes as the dead and injured were brought to the Shifa hospital, which has been on emergency footing since the start of Operation Pillar of Defence.

"The bodies of four young children lay on two metal trays in the morgue, covered in dust and blood. A crowd of onlookers outside became increasingly distressed as the body of the children's mother was wheeled in, covered in blankets.

"The strike was originally thought to have been aimed at a Hamas official, Mohamed Dalou.

"In all, 84 Palestinians, about half of them civilians, have been killed in the five-day onslaught and 720 have been wounded."

Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem, The Guardian, 19 November 2012



GazaStrip2

Palestinians gather around a crater caused by an Israeli air strike on the al-Dallu family's home in Gaza City, 18 November 2012: photo by AFP Photo / Marco Longari


“The Israeli military is prepared to significantly expand the operation. The soldiers are ready for any activity that could take place… the Israel Defense Forces have attacked more than 1,000 terror targets in the Gaza Strip and it continues its operation in this very moment.
 
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a weekly cabinet meeting, 18 November 2012


AFTERMATH. Palestinian men gather around a crater caused by an Israeli air strike on the al-Dallu family's home in Gaza City on November 18, 2012. AFP PHOTO/MARCO LONGARI
 

Palestinian men gather around a crater caused by an Israeli air strike on the al-Dallu family's home in Gaza City, 18 November 2012: photo by AFP Photo / Marco Longari

"We must blow Gaza back to the Middle Ages, destroying all the infrastructure including roads and water.

Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai, as quoted by Yeshiva World News, 18 November 2012




A Palestinian man kisses the hand of a dead relative in the morgue of Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, 18 November 2012: photo by Bernat Armangue / AP


“The residents of Gaza are not innocent, they elected Hamas. The Gazans aren’t hostages; they chose this freely, and must live with the consequences.

"We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima -- the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too.

"There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing. Then they’d really call for a ceasefire.

"Were this to happen, the images from Gaza might be unpleasant –- but victory would be swift, and the lives of our soldiers and civilians spared.

“There is no middle path here -- either the Gazans and their infrastructure are made to pay the price, or we reoccupy the entire Gaza Strip.”

Gilad Sharon, son of former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, editorial in Jerusalem Post, 17 November 2012





Israeli soldiers check ammunition at a staging area near the border with the Gaza Strip, 19 November 2012
: photo by Nir Elias / Reuters

Smoke rises after an Israeli forces strike in Gaza City, Sunday, Nov. 18, 2012. The Israeli military widened its range of targets in the Gaza Strip on Sunday to include the media operations of the Palestinian territory's Hamas rulers, sending its aircraft to attack two buildings used by both Hamas and foreign media outlets. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Smoke rises after an Israeli forces strike in Gaza City, Sunday, 18 November 2012. The Israeli military widened its range of targets in the Gaza Strip on Sunday to include the media operations of the Palestinian territory's Hamas rulers, sending its aircraft to attack two buildings used by both Hamas and foreign media outlets
: photo by Bernat Armangue / AP




A Palestinian man cries next the body of a dead relative in the morgue of Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, 18 November 2012: photo by Bernat Armangue / AP




Palestinians gather around a destroyed house after an Israeli air strike in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, 19 November 2012: photo by Abu Mustafa / Reuters


Spiral staircase in a tall pagoda, Singapore: photo by Ray Tornes, 23 April 2007

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

how can we evade ?

L'Enfant de la Haute Mer said...

Voices from Israel, 15/11/2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZP1Pe3J2Dc&feature=player_embedded

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Tom,

..The wyndy worde[s] the Ies quaynt game
..of soden change maketh me agast
..for dred to fall I stond not fast
Alas I tred an endles maze...

followed by photos and words (grim grim grim)

(long live Wyatt)


11.19

light coming into sky above still black
ridge, silver of planet behind branches
in foreground, wave sounding in channel

forget experienced, subject
related to “recollect”

thereabout, without a frame,
present in foreground

silver line of sun reflected in channel,
line of 7 pelicans gliding toward point

Hazen said...

Yet again, yet again, yet again
peering over the edge
into the abyss,
the sudden spiraling downward
sick with fury, helpless.
yet again, yet again, yet again.

Yet this feeling
is less than nothing
compared to what those
in the prison yard,
in the foxpen of Gaza
must (must!) endure:

the torn flesh, the poisonous ruins,
the constantly recurring, familiar dread,
the sky a weapon
where death approaches from every angle.
The mind gives way
in this ceaseless obscene war
that distorts and maims
what it does not destroy.

TC said...

The recursiveness in the present events is palpable. The last major Israeli assault in Gaza happened almost exactly four years ago, between the American elections and the inauguration. Then as now, civilians, particularly children, bore the brunt of the blow. There are now reports from medical personnel in Gaza that they are seeing children with severe disfiguring burns, as was the case after the white phosphorus raids four years ago.

The video link sent by L'Enfant tells more than one might have wished to know about the attitude of the mainstream Israeli populace toward the massacre in Gaza.

"On 15/11/2012 some anti-war organizations held anti-war demonstration in Tel Aviv against the latest massacre in Gaza. This is some footage from the counter demonstration.

"The man giving a speech in this video is Michael Ben Ari, an Israeli Knesset member.

"This is NOT some extreme minority but the consensus of the vast majority of the Israeli public."

Voices from Israel, 15/11/12

[Transcription from video:]
"The people demand victory!
"The people demand war!
"Hooray for the IDF!
"The people demand to expel leftists!"

[shouting down anti-war demonstrators:]
"You motherfuckers you whores! You were born from the sperm of Nazis!
"You motherfuck with arabs you sons of whores!
"Eighty years you are doing terror to Jews you whores!
"God will take you!
"I hope in the next alarm you will be deaf and you won't hear it! You sons of whores!
"Spit on your face you whores!"

[Israeli Knesset member Michael Ben Ari takes the bullhorn:]

"Good evening good Jews!
"And all the traitor leftists!
"We are saying let the IDF kick some ass!
"Leftists get out!
"Leftists to Gaza!
"And don't get confused! There are no innocent people in Gaza! No more negotiations!
"No more agreements!
"We're getting them on their knees and kicking their ass!
"Erasing Gaza!
"Why is it only 200 flights and 15 killed?
"We want 15 flights and 2000 killed!

"I'm telling Netanyahu, before you give your citizens food, before you give them anything, give them security!
"And security means erasing Gaza!"

Mose23 said...

imprisoned in liberte[s]

Our brightly coloured wipeclean chicken coops

for dred to fall I stond not fast

No such fears for Bibi. Down he goes, taking his diabolical liberties, "...full of passionate intensity".

TC said...

... somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Not quite a man... Aye,

Surely some revelation is at hand... and cometh

a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi, crying:

"Erase the lot of them! Security means erasure!"

Elmo St. Rose said...

now me I'm just a doctor in a
remote place...and if I kept my
mouth shut they would probably
say he's just a People of the Book
so he'll just have to pay double
taxes.....but there's no telling
what the Islamic extremists would
do to all you poets who ain't
behind the veil, who don't flog
and stone adulterers....my God
what would ever happen in Californication land ie most of
America...and the proponents of gay
marriage or anything else....the
gay leather bars off of Market
street would surely feel the leather then...and perhaps Katusha
rockets will be fired from Oakland
which surely must have a radical
Mosque, at Berkeley, because of
its historical lax morality cursed
state according to Sharia law...
but not to worry...Berkeley is on
the list but a long way away...
but Israel is not...the message
of Mein Kumpf...Hitler's little so
called "unbelievable" ditty is that
if someone comes to kill you because you're Jewish...kill him
first...is there anybody in the
boobyhood who's willing to live and
let live probably not and war is
Hell...there's plenty of land
like in the US most people live in
cities and do great....Islamists
make our main stream politicians
even Mitt Romney seem like Allen
Ginsburg in comparison to them
and war is never pleasant but there
are worse things than war..

L'Enfant de la Haute Mer said...

Thank you so much Tom for explaining and transcription!


The Child of the High Seas

L'Enfant de la Haute Mer said...

This video (the link I sent) is no longer available due to a copyright claim by תומר סלוצקי

We'll find it again

The Child of the High Seas

TC said...

L'Enfant,

Well, what do you know. Here it is again. The clip was reposted by Eretz Zen, 19 November 2010. Some voices don't seem to want to go away. (Talking of infinite recursion!)

Israeli Demonstration, Tel Aviv, 15 November 2012: "Wipe Gaza Off the Map!"

Robb said...

Jezuz Krist ahmen.

This will never be covered and treated fairly by American media. This is where art comes in.

Thank you for this art.

Susan Kay Anderson said...

They are looking at their religion.
It is in an unfathomable crater.
Space, created by a weapon
from another religion. The religious wars
are an excuse. An excuse to kill,
to obliterate. More contaminated ground
to gain and call it history
at a distance. Up close, it is
beautiful fur, cheap pelts once again,
to be sold to the others.