THE CENTRE EMPTIED BY THE PEOPLE CANNOT HOLD
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold (…)
W.B. Yeats
“92% of the general assembly boycotted Netanyahu’s speech! The 75 countries that walked out only reflect those who walked out. It does not reflect the huge balance of countries that never sent their representatives into the hall to participate in listening to his bullshit. it is the total of both that is the story and shows the true nature of the opposition of the general assembly countries to Zionist program!”
Eric Rubin, founder of People Against Genocide Everywhere
one lone desperate zionist
impeccably dressed
self importantly grotesque
paces the General Assembly aisles
policing the void
left by seventy five UN delegations
that walked out
to protest
the rants of the chief perpetrator
of the world’s most lethal genocide
this craven censor walks up and down
and all around
annotating
the emptiness
he tries in vain
to fill with the spectacle
of a presence most Kafkaesque
if he had a tape measure
he would gladly gauge
and jot down
the dimensions of his outrage :
rows and rows
of independent nations
representing billions of Peoples
who have gone awol
rather than become collaborators
as he creates
a hit list of walkout delegations,
as he tallies
those who boycotted the hall
and never set feet in it at all,
in real time
the General Assembly floor
is nothing but the microcosm
of a battleground
where the few who prefer to remain
seated
are sealing their own future
as criminals of war
meanwhile a clownish comptroller
counts but cannot steal
the carpeted yards of empty chairs
left by those
who because they are People-centered
prefer to congregate elsewhere
the inviolability of sovereign land
seat by seat
armrest by armrest
is affirmed here –
as it is marched for
across the streets of the planet
as it is fought for
in Palestine
from ancestral door
to ancestral door
tell me,
oh zionist,
how much does the vacuum
left by this spreading Resistance
measure
this UNGA around ?
oh zionist,
you waste your hubris,
your ill-gotten gold
and what is left of your impunity
attempting to measure
everything
including the depth
of the bottomless abyss
as you spiral down
out of History
the centre
that the People leaves empty
cannot hold
(c) Julia Wright, September 27, 2026. All Rights Reserved to Susan Abulhawa’s playgroundsforpalestine.org, to the Steering Committee of the GSF and to what remains of the family of Refaat Alareer assassinated by the IOF.
From 1789 to 2026: A tale of two Bastilles
in the streets
of neglected French suburbs
dark-skinned high schoolers
who study under leaking roofs
without desks
wonder that
they are asked
to study famous figures
who made history
because they revolted –
from Arthur Rimbaud
to Olympe de Gouges –
and yet their own revolt
is trashed
feeling like throwaways
the only shields they have
are plastic bins on rollers
while the robocops
test their new expensive
fluorescent toys –
stroboscopic shields
that make even youtube viewers
look away or be sick
refusing to become
cannon fodder
in the billionaires’ profitable wars
they chant:
“our country is rearming
but our future
is being disarmed”
elsewhere
a group of youth
armed with only
one Palestinian flag
dance in front of police
armed to the teeth
the spark
that began in France
has spread to
Belgium
The Netherlands
Germany,
Spain
Italy
Greece
Portugal
Ireland
Chile
Brazil
and France’s colonies:
Mayotte
Guyana
Guadeloupe
Martinique
Reunion –
and tomorrow
beyond porous borders
others will join in
and today
on the very square
where the French People tore down
the feudal prison of the Bastille,
legions of children
dismantled it
all over again
ghostly stone
by ghostly stone –
acting out the History
that without teachers
they learned alone
(c) Julia Wright October 8, 2026. All Rights Reserved.
A CHILD HAS LOST HIS HAND
” (…) Do you hear in the countryside
those ferocious soldiers roaring
they come within reach of our arms
to slit the throats of our sons and wives {…} “
“La Marseillaise” sung during the French Revolution and adopted as the French National Anthem in 1795
an angry child
booklorn
deskless
teacherless
does not hesitate
to go down to the street
to claim his dignity
and
his stolen agency
that child has now lost his hand
but the press says
it is his own fault
he should not have grasped
an unexploded stun grenade
to throw it back
except that
they echo the police’s story
without listening to the words
of the French National anthem
this native son sings
as if discovering its rekindled meaning
in these not so changed times:
do you hear in the suburbs
those ferocious police roaring
they come within reach of our hands
to mutilate sons, fathers and wives …
that child in pain’s agony
is now an amputee
like those dancing on Gaza beach
but he will forever
remember
that the History
absentee teachers could not teach
was grasped proudly in both his hands
was firmly within his reach
(c) Julia Wright October 9, 2026. All Rights Reserved.
A CLASSROOM FAR BIGGER THAN A BATTLEFIELD
” The civilization which had given birth to Bigger contained no spiritual sustenance, had created no culture which could hold and claim his allegiance and faith, had sensitized him and had left him stranded “
How “Bigger” was born. Richard Wright. 1940.
A Mathilde, ma petite fille
i dreamed of Bigger
again
i dreamed
of the first page of Native Son –
of the invasion of the rat
into the kitchenette
where
he slept
the rat
becoming the state
feeding on
the few crumbs
it grudgingly concedes
today
in France
the land where Richard chose to expatriate,
thousands of poor and dark-skinned kids
go to school
where the first lesson
is to kill
invading rats
and i think of Bigger
again
and even though
their absentee teachers
never taught them the book
today
thousands of disenfranchised kids
march and protest
rather than become a statistic
predicted
rather than beocme
more Biggers
to be fed
to rats
or prisons
fleeing their infested
flooded moldy schools,
rejecting their deskless
airless halls
Gen Z
has turned France
into a nationwide classroom
far bigger than a battlefield
and in the classroom
of the streets
where Plexiglas telephone booths
are now lined with their books
where café tables
have become their desks
where torn pieces of carton
serve as black boards
there are many lessons
these children teach us
if only we paused
marched at their side
and took the time
to listen
(c) Julia Wright October 10, 2026. All Rights Reserved to my granddaughter who is a social worker in the South of France.
