Written Text: Two Mosques

This previously unpublished commemorative poem was written in the wake of the terrorist attacks that took place at the Al Noor Mosque and at the Linwood Islamic Centre, in Christchurch on Friday March 15, 2019, in which 51 people were killed.

Two Mosques, Christchurch

The poem writes the gunman invisible:

a him who hates so much is indefensible.

Scrupulous, they followed their beliefs to peace

he chose to deny and scythe with brutal lies.

Their blood unfurls as that of martyrs,

though they never wanted their altars.

All that's impure, he brought with a smirk;

he will be forever cobwebbed by the dark,

his darkness sawn out of rocks in his head.

But they will bloom forever, each one dead,

as the nation mourns and mountains crack.

Sad days amid rainbow petals, freshened stems,

a tide of grief that will never leave the path,

that winds with so many threads and colours.

He wanted ammunition; they bade him welcome.

He wanted crime; they gave him forgiveness.

He wanted erasure to fill the hole in his soul.

They barely sought to acknowledge him at all,

but only as a shooter who rose in a jabber,

and blind with loathing pulled the trigger.

Let them be a mass of flowers,

that are vessels of keening spirits.

Let them be a mass of flowers,

bunched and wrinkled and handwritten.

Let them be a mass of flowers,

like the remains of a maze trampled down.

Let them be a mass of flowers,

like a storm system stirring the ground.

Let them be a mass of flowers,

like a compass and a journey.

Let them be a mass of flowers,

that winds from mosque to mosque,

and then around the city, dusted with pollen and history.

David Eggleton

https://thespinoff.co.nz/books/14-06-2019/the-friday-poem-massacre-by-tusiata-avia/ (This is in her new anthology, The Savage Coloniser Book)

https://cdn.auckland.ac.nz/assets/auckland/about-us/the-university/official-publications/uninews/2019/uninews-02-2019.pdf (The Selina Tusitala Marsh poem is on Page 3)

https://schoolspoetryaward.co.nz/2019/08/09/march-15th-emily-blennerhassett/

https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/afternoons/audio/2018687085/gail-ingram-reads-i-cannot-write-a-poem-about-christchurch

https://schoolspoetryaward.co.nz/2019/08/09/the-bonds-of-love-we-meet-pippi-duncan/