Blockade by Dan Marlin

The people of Gaza want libraries.
Every day they read
clouds of questions
in their children’s eyes.

They want pencils
to write down grandmother’s words
before her voice
fades into silence.

The people of Gaza
want tubes for incubators
and dialysis machines,
truckloads of spiral notebooks,
aspirin and macaroni.

They want travel
to cancer wards in Tel Aviv,
to visit a dying sister in Beirut,
to study on scholarship in London.

The people of Gaza want distances,
having grown
weary of watchtowers
at the horizon.

They want thread and sequins,
fabric for wedding dresses
smuggled under the desert.

Ask the people of Gaza
if they want roses
though water runs out
before everyone can drink.

The people of Gaza love
the stars of winter
but want roofs between
sky and their infants’ sleep.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/08/17/three-poems-by-daniel-martin/