Now you know

One hundred and thirty five thousand
palestinians in Beirut,
but I didn’t know and nobody told me
and what could I do or say,
anyway?

They said you shot their London ambassador
and when that was not true
they said “so what?”.

They said you shelled
their northern villages
and when UN forces reported
“that was not true”,
because your side of the cease-fire was holding,
they said “so what?”.

They said they simply wanted to carve
a twenty five mile buffer zone,
and then they ravaged your water supplies,
your electricity,
your hospitals,
your schools,
your highways and byways
all the way north to Beirut.

They blew up your homes
and demolished the grocery stores
and blocked the Red Cross
and took away
doctors to jail,
and they cluster bombed
girls and boys,
whose bodies
swelled purple and black
into twice
their original size.

They said something about “never again”
and then they made close to one million
human beings homeless
in less than three weeks
and they killed or maimed
40,000 of your men
and your women
and your children.

They said they were victims.
They said you were Arabs.
They called your
apartments and gardens
guerrilla strongholds.
Then they told you to leave,
didn’t you read
the leaflets that they dropped
from their hotshot fighter jets?
They told you to go.

Yes, I did know it was the money
I earned as a poet that paid
for the bombs
and the planes
and the tanks
that they used to
massacre your family.