‘Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.’
So Auden wrote in 1939, as night
descended on a world of ‘habit-forming pain’.
A lifetime later, Gaza proves him right.

This was a truth, he also wrote,
that ‘all schoolchildren learn’.
When histories of stubborn hatred are so long
and children’s lessons learned no sooner than forgot,
a lifetime later, Gaza proves him wrong.