My Poor Arab! Poem By Shant Norashkharian
COMPOSCLAS
My Poor Arab!
By S. Norashkharian
My poor Arab! The abused child of the world!
The darkest clouds blown by the winds of the West
Have cast shadows upon your land once again...
Who knows this time which of your sons will they claim?
Which of your towns will vanish with keyboard strokes
And how many friends will you search for in vain?
And how much blood, how much blood will they vomit
Flooding your streets and your bedrooms once again?
O my brother, where will you now hide from them?
They call themselves civilized...!
Yet their warplanes will very soon reappear
With blue and red and white colors marked on them
And fifty stars boasting their crimes without shame...!
Soon they will creep into your space once again
Invisible like the fingers guiding them
Raping! Raping! The virgin face of your skies
Chasing your nights away with their blinding fires
And bomb by bomb and shell by shell tearing down
All that you built stone by stone and breath by breath...!
They call themselves civilized...!
O, my brother, close your eyes and plug your ears!
No! Do not wait for what your dawns will unveil!
For their terror will make you hope for the nights
Which are trapped in the black holes of collapsed stars...!
No! Do not wait for the yellow dust of death
To clear away from the limbs spread everywhere
Like the remnants of your defiled dignity...!
And do not wait for your mothers to stumble
Upon the charred shoes their children left behind...!
They call themselves civilized...!
Yet these bullies will trade your blood for your oil
And the blood of their sons for their bank accounts...!
So let us pump your black liquid down their throats
Until they gasp like ducks caught in their oil spills
And while it flows in the veins and tentacles
Of their global conglomerates and World Banks
Let us burn it! Let us burn it with revenge!
For they built them to rule our fate with black hearts
And they bred them to squeeze our lungs like pythons...!
They call themselves civilized...!
Where is your voice, where is your voice my brother?
Where is your voice and why is it lost again
In the uproar of lynching mobs which exclaim:
“Entertain us, entertain us now or else!
If you have no more of scandals give us wars!”
Where is your voice and how is it missed again
By armies of reporters with satellites?
And which court ruled that you deserved punishment
For suffering the curse of your own tyrant?
They call themselves civilized...!
“Allah Akbar!” You cry from your minarets
“Bism Illahi El Rahman ou El Rahim!”
And you bow down like a zebra caught by throat
And accept your Allah’s will with frozen eyes
While the High Priests debate your fate in Councils
Which they have made to legalize their vile deeds...
O, the High Priests and the nations they butchered!
Five times a day you accept your Allah’s will
My dear brother, how will you now accept theirs?
They call themselves civilized...!
Walk with me now beyond borders drawn for us
And beyond the deserts where we lived like ghosts
Without footprints and without a signature
And beyond all of the fountains where our lips
Blistered with thirst which could never become quenched
And let us leave forever all the cities
Where our conscience became a clown wearing rags
Come with me now with a shovel and a rose
Let us bury a century of coffins...!
Only my soul hears your scream...!
Ontario, California
February 1998
* Copyright 1998 by Shant Norashkharian *