I think of you, o father
I think of you, o father, and I see no more light…
Beyond the hedge that leads to the field,
A soft voice rises like weeping.
And in the morning, shadows are walking…
Desolate was that day so far away!
Thou didst suffer for captivity
Faults not your own, but refusal to the coup d’etat
To celebrate again an ungrateful rite.
Not war, but smiles from life
You asked in that age that comes
to the gay time of spring,
copious with harvests and blossoms.
Men, women, old men, and children…
Numbers in the queue of poor puppets,
banished by human ignominy,
parade in procession like the dead.
To be a Nazi today sounds strange…
And yet the shame still returns intact
when even a piece of bread is denied
to the migrant rejected on the other side.
The slaughter of the innocents
Wings spread to the wind, they rise
In a silent procession,
Drifting like feathers,
They ascend into flight
From the hospital in Gaza,
Struck to the ground by a missile,
Tearing through its ancient heart.
They all rise together like Seraphim
Stolen from the games of another time.
The game of massacre now knows no end.
Crow’s wings fly over the ruins,
Brushing against angel wings in the sky.
The evening turns pale
Amidst ghostly figures.
Only the rubble mourns the dead,
Dead without a true reason,
A common burial remains
For scattered limbs.
The children are no longer afraid,
The hellish roars fall silent,
Hunger and thirst fall silent.
Their creations are offered to God
By grieving mothers as a gift.
From the altars of light, a dark image,
A sacrilegious land reveals
The infamous offspring of Cain.
Excited and honored, I thank the poet and publisher, Ali Imran, for publishing my two poems in his prestigious magazine.