Read the Gaza poem by a Cork writer that featured on the Irish Examiner's front page
Award-winning Cork writer William Wall wrote a poem for the Irish Examiner, depicting how the city of Gaza has become like a cemetery.
Eyeless in Gaza was featured on the front page of Wednesday's paper. It was accompanied by a picture of a dead Palestinian girl who was found in a search and rescue operation carried out by locals after an Israeli attack targeting a house belonging to the Abu Shamal family in the Bureij refugee camp in Gaza.
Here is Wednesday's front page. You can read the poem in full below.
Wednesday's Irish Examiner front page.
Eyeless in Gaza
by William Wall
A city becomes a cemetery
A hospital becomes a morgue
Becomes a slaughterhouse
Becomes an ossuary
Dust in the eyes
And dust in the mouth
A gale of wind blows it all away
There will be no stumble-stones
For the hundreds of thousands
No railway platform memorial
From here departed
No films of children playing
Bella Ciao on a broken guitar
No museum of the death camp
That was their home
Read More
Dozens of Palestinians killed while waiting for food trucks in Gaza
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Examiner
5 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
Read the Gaza poem by a Cork writer that featured on the Irish Examiner's front page
Award-winning Cork writer William Wall wrote a poem for the Irish Examiner, depicting how the city of Gaza has become like a cemetery. Eyeless in Gaza was featured on the front page of Wednesday's paper. It was accompanied by a picture of a dead Palestinian girl who was found in a search and rescue operation carried out by locals after an Israeli attack targeting a house belonging to the Abu Shamal family in the Bureij refugee camp in Gaza. Here is Wednesday's front page. You can read the poem in full below. Wednesday's Irish Examiner front page. Eyeless in Gaza by William Wall A city becomes a cemetery A hospital becomes a morgue Becomes a slaughterhouse Becomes an ossuary Dust in the eyes And dust in the mouth A gale of wind blows it all away There will be no stumble-stones For the hundreds of thousands No railway platform memorial From here departed No films of children playing Bella Ciao on a broken guitar No museum of the death camp That was their home Read More Dozens of Palestinians killed while waiting for food trucks in Gaza
Irish Examiner
2 days ago
- Irish Examiner
Irish Examiner view: Let us now give Tuam babies the dignity we denied them in life
With the preparatory work for the exhumation of 796 infant bodies from the site of a former mother and baby home in Tuam underway, the hopes for closure for so many families has redoubled. The hope too is that this country as a whole can put behind it a dark chapter whereby the nearly 800 dead babies were buried — some in a disused sceptic tank — without any burial records being kept. Between 1925 and 1961, the Tuam home run by nuns from the Bon Secours order was effectively an orphanage and adoption agency which was sanctioned by the State. Like so many others, what went on there was unknown to a majority of Irish society and, critically, unchallenged. Only those who ran these homes, those in authority who turned a blind eye, and those unfortunate enough to be sent to them know the full extent of the horror of the mother and baby home experience. While the government did appoint a commission of investigation into the appalling legacy of these homes and later formally apologised for its shortcomings during the period in which they operated, the sad truth is that the full story of the Tuam home and the wider scandal would never have emerged had it not been for the tenacity of historian Catherine Corless and former Irish Examiner journalist Conall Ó Fátharta. That the nation owes a debt of gratitude to the tireless work of campaigners is not in doubt but, over the next four weeks, as the site is secured and prepared for full excavation expected to begin on July 14, the deprivation, high infant mortality rates, and stigma that these homes represented will be laid bare. As a country, we have found it difficult to absorb the full horror of existence in places like the Tuam home, but what faces those charged with the excavation work will undoubtedly be grim. That this exercise is necessary is undoubted and particularly so as the nation faces up to its responsibilities with regard to those we so blithely discarded to a reality of unbearable distress and, as we now know, death. But perhaps the single most important aspect of this whole operation will be to afford those buried there a level of dignity in death that they were not accorded in life. Tourism pressure As protesters squirted water guns at tourists in Barcelona and Mallorca at the weekend, it was entirely incongruous that Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos was planning a virtual takeover of Venice for his upcoming nuptials. With thousands of demonstrators across Spain, Italy, and Portugal marching to demand an economic rethink of a business model they say is fuelling a housing crisis and erasing the character of their cities and towns, Venetians expressed exasperation that their city is becoming a playground for the wealthy. They gathered in a square near the Rialto Bridge and vowed to organise a series of protests when the city is expected to be besieged by hundreds of guests invited to the wedding of Bezos and his fiancee, Lauren Sanchez. Organisers said their intent was to stop Venice from turning into a city where locals could no longer afford to live because its properties were being snapped up by outsiders driving up prices. Focusing their anger on the Bezos wedding, which will occur in peak season in Venice with tens of thousands of tourists arriving daily, the protesters say it will markedly disrupt the lives of the city's dwindling resident population. Venice, like Barcelona and Mallorca, is fighting to have it given back to its residents, who say they are systematically being pushed out of their homes by short-term rentals. Their cities, they say, no longer have a relationship with their citizens. The cost of the Bezos wedding has been put as high as €18.5m and while city authorities dismiss locals' fears, calling this 'just another wedding', locals feel it is a wedding too far. Over-tourism is not yet a factor in Irish lives, but it might only be a matter of time. What's your view on this issue? You can tell us here Maritime security Twin announcements on the placing of a contract with a French company to supply sonar technology to Ireland to monitor sea cables in our waters and of the potential siting of a new naval base in Galway seem to indicate the Government is finally taking our maritime security seriously. Following a period in which it has become clear that we have neither the manpower, technology, nor facilities to protect our waters from pretty much any form of malevolent activity, the Government is intent on taking whatever steps necessary to bolster maritime defences. At a time when naval service numbers have fallen drastically — to the point where we cannot man all our naval vessels — and when security issues have become clear thanks to conflicts elsewhere in the world, the need for action has never more obvious. The deal signed last week with French company Thales DMS will see Ireland being equipped with a 'towed sonar array', a device which is pulled along underwater behind a naval ship and monitors the sub-sea domain. Intended to be operational by 2027, its purchase coincided with the announcement of a public consultation for a Maritime Security Strategy, which may see the development of a second naval base somewhere on the west coast, most likely near Galway. These are profound but necessary changes in the way we go about the business of protecting ourselves from any and all foreign threats, while also allowing us share critical information with fellow European maritime nations. They are also long overdue. Read More Irish Examiner view: Small changes add up on emissions
Irish Times
3 days ago
- Irish Times
Living next door to dereliction: ‘It's been rotting for years … Rats all over the place'
Standing in their front garden in Co Cork , Jennifer O'Regan and her husband Roy point to the wheelie bins. 'The rats come up the wall and go over to the bins,' says Roy. 'My daughter has a video of them running all over the bins.' Jennifer adds: 'They don't even run, they walk, as if to say this is our home as well and you're not moving us.' The couple, who bought their home on Churchfield Avenue, around 4km north of Cork City 17 years ago, attribute the presence of rats to a vacant council house next door. READ MORE The property has been boarded up for the past year having been empty for around two years before that following the death of a tenant. [ Derelict properties: CIÉ has not paid levies on vacant site as it has not received 'any bills' Opens in new window ] 'He was a great neighbour and kept the place immaculate,' says Jennifer. 'Now it's been left rotting for years and there are rats all over the place. You have rats, flies and dumping. 'I couldn't let my daughter Remie out the back for the last year because of the rats running around the place.' Two doors down from the empty property is another boarded-up house, which residents say has been vacant for close to five years. Some work has been carried out on it in recent years, including external installation, but the house remains vacant. Derelict council housing at Shannon Lawn, Mayfield, Cork city. Photograph: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision 'We cut the grass and the trees ourselves in the front garden of it just to try and make it look a bit nicer,' says Roy. 'Our kids are coming home and looking at two boarded-up houses. It's not good for their morale. They've been mocked once or twice in school, this kind of thing of 'you're living in the Bronx'.' He adds: 'It brings down the area. There's people crying out for houses and they would take the houses as they are. There's four houses boarded up around here within about 80 yards of each other.' Another neighbour, who lives close to the second empty house, adds: 'The place has just been left to rot basically. It's embarrassing when anyone is calling to the house. 'The place is infested with rats. It's disgusting and horrible to look out at the back garden. We had to get a cat. It's a disgrace with all the people that are homeless and crying out for homes and you have this just sitting here.' [ Vacancy, dereliction and demolition of existing buildings should be reduced, building group says Opens in new window ] The two houses on Churchfield Avenue are owned by Cork City Council, which says it expects they will both be returned to its stock in the third quarter of this year. Cork North-Central Sinn Féin TD Thomas Gould says there are families who would 'give their right hand for these houses'. He highlights other properties outside the city, in Mayfield and Knocknaheeney, which have been boarded up for years. Gould recently received figures from 29 of the 31 local authorities nationally showing there are more than 830 council homes that have been boarded up and vacant for more than a year. The garden of a derelict council house in Churchfield, Cork city. Photograph: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision Cork City Council has 99 properties that have been boarded up for more than two years, according to the figures, and has the highest level of vacant stock along with Donegal and Limerick. Void is the term used when council tenants vacate houses or flats, either transferring to somewhere more suitable or leaving to purchase their own home. The death of a tenant or a marital breakdown can also result in a unit becoming void, and these can vary greatly in terms of the level of refurbishment required. Houses generally get boarded up as soon as they become vacant and remain so until they are refurbished and ready to be let again. Locals say the vacant homes 'bring down the area'. Photograph: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision The Department of Housing says it is working with local authorities, as part of a commitment in the programme for government, to improve the turnaround times of vacant social housing units. A report from 2023 indicated that, on average, around 2.81 per cent of the social housing stock is vacant, with a turnaround time of 33 weeks. The department contributes an average of around €11,000 to refurbish a void unit, with councils also able to avail of energy efficiency grants. The average cost of doing up a void property across the country is €28,000, with those in cities generally higher. Cork City Council says it 'appreciates' the funding provided by the department through the voids programme and Energy Efficiency Retrofit Project. 'Although funding is limited, it enables us to move forward with our key priorities and make meaningful progress.' While some insulation work has been done, the property remains empty. Photograph: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision Lord Mayor of Cork City Dan Boyle says the local authority 'can and should be doing better' at returning vacant properties to use. The Green Party councillor, a former TD and senator, references funding as well as having to rely on private contractors as issues. 'I think there is a fair criticism about the length of time we take doing them and the scale of repair work we insist on having done before it's reallocated,' he says. Boyle says the ability of councils 'to directly affect repairs' is a problem, with reliance on private contractors adding an element of delay as 'you are tendering and managing and so forth'. 'That would have been less so when you had a direct unit within your local authority that was doing this work directly,' he says. 'I consider that part of the problem. If local councils were restructured along the lines they used to be when we had better housing programmes in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, we probably would be a lot more efficient and doing this work a lot more quickly.' Locals say their children have been bullied in school because of the dereliction. Photograph: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision Last week, Gould and his party brought forward a motion in the Dáil calling for urgent action on vacant council housing. His party colleague Seán Crowe spoke of how people come to his constituency office in southwest Dublin asking whether they can take on a vacant house and 'do it up themselves'. 'I have to tell them it doesn't work like that,' he said. 'People just do not get why these properties are lying idle.' Gould added: 'This is a simple solution. It will not solve the housing crisis but for hundreds if not thousands of families it will make a real difference. There are empty homes and we have families who need those homes who are in emergency accommodation or sharing houses between three generations, using box bedrooms.' Sinn Féin TD Thomas Gould at Shannon Lawn, Mayfield, Cork city. Photograph: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision In response, Minister for Housing James Browne said the Government would continue doing everything in its power to minimise turnaround times of vacant council homes. This, he added, would include implementing strategic programmes for planned maintenance informed by stock condition surveys. 'When these houses are made vacant, there is a family that have just been living in it,' he told the House. 'How it can take months and years to put a new family back in is incomprehensible. It should not be happening and as the Minister, I'm going to make sure that local authorities are not indulging in these delays anymore. 'If there is a family moving out, a health and safety assessment and basic repairs should be carried out but leaving houses vacant for months and years on end – that is not on the Government, that is on the local authority.'
