by Hassen Lorgat
(poem written after hearing Naazim Adam and Rev Allan Boesak speak at the PSA function 16 August 2026 about the UN report august 2026)
The essence of childhood has been destroyed — the headlines read,
but the bullets and bombs do not stop.
Words cannot explain.
The old poet croaks.
The poet cannot speak—
this unspeakable cruelty of the baby killers,
who starve, maim, and kill the young
before they know what’s right and who is wrong
because they hold the license to kill.
Now on hollowed-out ground,
they advertise a better Riviera Life for some—
manufactured over the carcasses of those gone far too soon.
The poet’s hoarse voice sips
from drying wells,
stands and recites
over the bloodied calico
that wraps those tiny bodies—genocided.
Recites from the heart, from the sacred books, the burial prayer.
…There is no place to bury them.
Everywhere is a cemetery.
But for those lucky enough
to get a decent send-off to their Maker
There is an epitaph waiting—
of renewal—
a justice yearning.
We cannot read anymore. We cannot watch anymore.
But we cannot un-see, cannot unlearn what has happened—
the unhealing sore.
It is too late.
…the poets cannot turn away or flip the page
nor throw words of insult at the baby killers—
for it is not enough to stop that which words cannot explain
What the poets know is this:
those who stole the breaths of the young
cannot, too, be fully human again.
ends
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