The sky bears witness: Poems from Gaza

September in Gaza talks into someone's ears

By Mohammed Moussa

September in Gaza carries the scent of
newly-harvested absence, caught between
the gossips of a newborn breeze,
gently tracing the face of a mother readying
her voice to rise again.
Her words endure,
etched in the features of her son,
who bears her likeness on his first day
in a school housed within a tent.
It tastes of a parched farewell,
sipping its first drop
after hours of waiting
alone in a queue.
It speaks like a bloodied dawn,
stripped of words
to bridge the silence
between life and death.
It looks like fatherhood peeled bare,
with no life left to give.

No one will ever weep over you my friend

By Mohammed Mousa

No one will ever weep over you, my friend.
I'm here, I can tell you.
Not even the sound of gunfire,
the stranger who was once
your good friend.
Everyone is caught up
in their own lives,
their evening habits,
buying flowers for their partners.
The Arabian Sea,
the return key,
even the palm tree your hands planted in the
garden of melancholy
didn't shed a tear,
as if you weren't a peer.
No one cried over you,
my friend, not even this returnee
who knows your name
and your favourite black tea.

The night refused to fade

By Ruba Khalid

2:40 a.m.
The world was asleep.
So was I—
until something inside me whispered:
Run.
But I didn't.
I froze.
And then—
the bomb fell.
Not a sound,
but a force
that punched the air from my lungs,
threw me backward,
into the closet,
into a space barely big enough
for the shaking heart I carried.
I curled up,
pressed a pillow to my face
as the windows exploded—
glass spinning like a swarm of knives.
Some found my feet.
Pain bloomed sharp and wet.
But I stayed silent.
Even my breath
hid from the world.
I didn't know
if I was waiting to live
or waiting to die.
And when it passed—
when the screaming dust began to settle—
I was still there,
half-buried in fear,
wondering why I was spared.
The night didn't end.
It stayed with me.
Inside me.
Louder
than the blast.

If i must die 

By Refaat Alareer

If I must die, 
you must live 
to tell my story 
to sell my things 
to buy a piece of cloth 
and some strings, 
(make it white with a long tail) 
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza 
while looking heaven in the eye 
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze— 
and bid no one farewell 
not even to his flesh 
not even to himself— 
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above 
and thinks for a moment an angel is there 
bringing back love 
If I must die 
let it bring hope 
let it be a tale.
(Refaat Alareer, who wrote this poem shortly before his death, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on December 6, 2024 along with his brother, his brother's son, his sister, and her three children.)