The names and the faces of children change... The brutality and the misery do not…

Let the darkness of the night
Be washed away
By the morning light
That’s here to stay.
To spread across this blessed land
That bleeds now in mortal pain.

Don’t you be in a rush
To be awake
To play
To run
In your mother’s warmth
Or to be in the joy of school…

You just sleep deep
Sleep, you beautiful!

Sleep in prolonged, eternal bliss
Now that you’ve found
Ever-elusive peace,
That stayed far away from you
When days of misery, is all you knew.

You were too fragile to take
This vicious cycle of war and lull,
To make any sense of
That long, concrete wall.

But now you are free.
Your lifeless, charred body
Maimed by their shrapnel
Has taken you away from this living hell.

I won’t miss you much
I’ve been too numb, too out of touch!
My indifference has blocked all your pain
My bankrupt conscience has destroyed my shame.

So sleep you beautiful, sleep in mirth
Fly away from this senseless Earth…!

* More than 60 children in Gaza have been killed in the last few days of Israeli bombings.