Sometime during 2016 and 2017 – I forget precisely when – the Oldswinford Writers’ Group, of which I’m a member (having first joined in the summer of 2016), undertook to produce a collection of prose and poetry, the proceeds from sales of which would be donated to the humanitarian aid endeavour in Syria, when our screens were daily filled with appalling scenes of devastation and displacement consequent upon the Syrian civil war.
My contribution was a single poem, which I had reason, recently, to rediscover. Those scenes of ideological insanity have now shifted away from Syria, to Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, Iran et al, our screens filled with the same destruction and carnage, translocating from one place to another.
Here’s my poem, an adult translation of the unchanging blight of war as seen through the eyes of a child. When I read it again, I was surprised – or, perhaps, unsurprised - to see that, with changes of location, I could have written it yesterday.
Syria’s Child
Or
Over The Rainbow: A Different Song
{With acknowledgement of E.Y. ‘Yip’ Harburg]
From beyond the horizon, way up high,
The death-birds come and missiles fly.
They streak the sky and scorch the earth,
Spit death on life and all of worth.
From down the street come the fighting men,
With their fear-filled eyes and hateful cries,
Their bullets that lodge in buildings and lives;
Unhealing wounds on all that survives.
Somewhere in the scrub of this blighted land,
In the ruts and juts of the twisted scrap,
In the jags and snags of the steel and rubble,
In hollows dug with ravaged hands...
In huddles and knots ’gainst the cracks and bangs,
’gainst the rumble of trucks and munitions’ clangs,
’gainst the groans of structures before they fall,
’gainst the wails of the crushed ‘neath collapsing walls...
In the burning fires, where people scream
And writhe and run and melt away,
And flesh leaves bones, and souls leave hearts,
And death and pain mark another day...
In the combat streets where fathers die,
Where shells cleave love and mothers cry,
Where families cease and children stray,
Where all that was, just wastes away...
Somewhere there, amongst all that’s broken,
Beneath it, amidst it, above it, blended,
Or urchin-like squatting in a corner blasted,
That’s where you’ll find me, alive and dead.
I wish it would stop, but there are those who don’t,
Who despoil for advantage and care not for the cost;
Psychotic, despotic, autocratic and cruel,
They think nothing of destroying what they seek to rule.
But beyond the horizon the skies are blue,
Where the dreams that are dreamt, I hear come true;
Where proud people posture, with much bold to say;
Words full of fear, urging caution, delay.
And you, who are you, who rant and rave,
Who snarl and spit and prance and pray,
Who plead humanitarianism and decry genocide,
But do nothing to remove the savage from its hide?
You’re too far away, way up on high,
In a land I’ve imagined in a quiet lullaby,
Where unclouded by war the skies are blue,
And the dreams you dream really do come true.
To beyond the horizon, way up high,
The strafing done, the death-birds fly.
So if over the horizon the death-birds can fly,
Then why, oh why, oh why can’t I?
And me? Who am I?
I am Syria’s child, old before my time;
Given adult words,
And adult eyes.
Someday I’ll wish upon my star,
And wake up where the war-clouds are
Far, far behind me; and there, for all who choose to see,
I’ll be the face that reminds of a distant tragedy.
And the holocaust that trapped me, that licked at my flesh,
That picked at the carcase of all that was left,
Will, snuffed out, have gone, into history unfurled
There to brand the conscience of the world.
I'd really like to read your comments, either on the blog, or over on my Facebook page.
Until next time,
Robert