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| Abu Malik al-Shami Source : http://www.bbc.com |
An Elegy for Aleppo
1.
Pollen with clots of chlorine
on streets scarred by footsteps
ending far from where they started
Puddles of rocks
that once were homes
pounded into sooty fragments
like dusty phlegm
fired from the septum of the sky
shaped like a Russian warhead
Blood covers the last words
in the pages of a starving diary
like the only metaphor left alive in this silence
An almost torn foot
holds on with its final nerves
to the wounded leg of a weeping child
A woman on the summit of death
scans the burnt neighborhood
for the inventory of a short-lived farewell
From the loose strings
in the green Qanun of Noori
to the wedding ring
on Nizar’s severed finger
Memories of a redacted past
slowly decay beneath
the eyelids of an exiled future
A thirsty old man
talks to the blurry skies,
shrieking in the empty lanes,
“I won't leave! I won't leave!” ,
throwing stones
at the shielded stars
Smoke from the crowded hospital
barrel-bombed by the ruler's thumb
swirls around his head like a wreath
Leaflets coughed up by armed clouds
land on the parted lips of prolonged hunger
like epitaphs for graves never to be built
“...you know that everyone has given up on you…”
2.
Aleppo,
a city too small for the world's memory
Aleppo,
a blot on every breath
of this frozen globe
a blot as thick as the tears
of a wiped people
Aleppo,
the lament of a besieged bird,
its wings stuffed with mortar feathers
Aleppo,
whose poets sing
the fugues of death
“Where once was a city,
now remains a residue
Where once was a story,
now buried an elegy”
Ashes of Rain
Russian syllables still haunt
the solitude of Syrian skies
Persian bayonets still block
the passage of homeless sonnets
Smoke from bombed hospitals
dissolves softly, without a sigh,
through the frozen nights
of the naked globe
into that widening gyre
where silence submits to despair
Death swings from pupil to pupil
inside the squinting eyes of the executioner
Like the steps of a dystopic ladder
the departed lie on a betrayed soil
within reach of their dreams,
and epitaphs,
both redacted,
with bullets
Starving men tumble
through the evacuated streets
looking for letters
to fill the obscenities on hungry tongues
Lovers huddle in the corners
of their crumbling hearts
holding with all the strength
in their scalded eyelids
the receding whispers
on beloved’s lips
Fathers pray frantically
to faraway gods
as infants gasp
in the arms of a helpless nurse
An young man,
blood dripping from his strained muscles,
drags his grandmother's corpse
on a creaky wheelbarrow
to that sacred graveyard
where
‘ angels visit
on moonless midnights
to heal the horrors
trapped in the hearts
of haggard spirits ’
passing by the wounded postman
deaf with the buzz of soaring planes,
that chant the Ruler's name,
reading aloud all the letters
he couldn't deliver
The night descends early,
the dying refuse to leave their land
Clouds crack
as if stung by the hammer
of an angry sun
Rain
The bombs pause in flight,
the raindrops stick to the shattered domes
of gutted mosques
People rush onto the moist lanes,
some kneel, others gaze,
in sorrow and rage
their eyes raised,
without a flicker,
to the spotless sky
their fists full,
of ashes,
from bonds burnt alive
all of them,
at once,
open their palms
to this witness of war
