Do Not Forget What is Going on in Gaza — It is Remorseless

Derelictions of Grammar and Rhetoric

 

‘...achieve all of the war goals in Gaza’

 

            latest official communiqué from the Israeli military government

 

 

Refrain of bombardment

and the oldest refrain of blockade

            and starvation insist anaphora

            is failing — from an outside

looking in, knowing a repetition

of death doesn’t add up to wisdom

            or even a beautiful if pitiless verse.

 

            The ‘goals of war’ are an intoning,

a grammar of removal. As cataphora

is to anaphora, why are they, the ‘citizen-soldiers’

            so ready to sing a song of killing,

            so ready to believe they will clear

a path through their consciences

with tanks and bulldozers?

 

 

            John Kinsella

Letter to the Vice-Chancellors and Board Members of Australian Universities

 14/5/2024

 

To Vice-Chancellors and Board Members of Australian Universities

 

I wish to:

 

1. Support the absolute right for students to protest/camp etc. peacefully on university campuses.

2. Denounce the genocide being enacted by the Israeli military in Gaza. Further, to note the ongoing systemic oppression and neo-colonialism enacted by Israel’s government, military and settler-culture.

3. I wish to affirm universal human rights.

4. Speaking from a pacifist position that rejects all forms of violence, I wish to restate my many decades-long objection to weapons production (for anyone anywhere), the military in all its forms, and places of learning being used directly or indirectly for these purposes. It is abhorrent that universities have so deeply connected themselves with ‘defence’ — an industry of death.

5. Speak against any form of support for such violence.

6. Speak in support of diverse communities across the globe that respect each other, share space and materials, and are mutually supporting.

 

Thanks.

 

Sincerely,

 

Emeritus Professor John Kinsella, poet, environmentalist, peace activist and writer