Summer Holidays And Gaza- Poem by Bernedita Rosinha Pinto

Everyone feels so excited
when summer sets in
and holiday time reverberates;
everyone decides to look at the map
to select a place to go
and take some rest and rejuvenate;
so, mothers get busy packing bags
fathers get busy buying tickets,
and while no one cares who is going where,
everyone thinks holiday is a pilgrimage
and it is necessary for leisure and recreation.

So, if some one is flying to New York,
another is heading to Dubai;
the exotic places are best sought by spendthrifts
as they are the ones who focus on going
to Egypt, Paris, London, Rome and so on;
and as some rush to see the Pyramids,
others rush to see the Eiffel Tower;
while some go to hover around Buckingham Palace
some go to see the Vatican and the Pope.

But now the holiday season is so worrisome
as the temperatures are so unbearable
with the summer heat soaring beyond degrees,
thus compelling the body to perspire involuntarily;
and as there are wars here and there
it makes everyone so cautious,
it makes the mind also carry its apprehensions
and take shorter holidays in safer places.

How sad the world is today to see
the inhumanity and cruelty in Gaza
that any holiday destination to another country
makes the traveler feels a guilt within oneself
as the people out there in Gaza
are in such deep sufferings
as they either get injured or they get killed
by the hour, by the day, by the explosions
that it makes any holiday-maker anywhere
in the world to forget his sense of recreation
as by watching the television in his hotel room,
the bizarre sight of dead bodies shown on the TV
or the injured being rushed to the hospitals
by ambulances in Gaza
hampers the holiday mood.

And as mothers and their little children in Gaza
struggle for food and shelter in their streets
as if they have been cast upon
an island of ruins without a roof overhead,
with no bed to sleep or a place to rest peacefully,
can a holiday in any place on this earth
offer any excitement
as every heart is filled with sadness
to watch the plight of the people of Gaza
who are still facing unending sufferings and hardships
which no man nor international organization
have been able to terminate and I wonder why.