Gaza – a new poem | Ben Okri

All that hatred, that anger, can only blossom into a miracle': the prize-winning author calls for a bigger response to the tragedy

I don't know how many have died
Or how many died before war flared up.
There must be a way to listen to all
The pain that burns in a people
Must be a way to hear all that anguish.
Pain creates pain creates deadness
Of heart. Distance makes all that suffering
Unreal. How else can great powers
Add bombs and missiles to an agony
That's engulfing the world in fire and rage?
How did we become so deaf to the death
Of innocent children and their mothers?
How did we get to measure the value
Of one death against another, with one
Worth a thousand of the other?

Ben Okri is a Booker prize-winning author and poet. His book Tiger Work, a collection of stories, essays and poems about the climate crisis, is published by Head of Zeus, and in the US by Other Press