Birds of Gaza

A poem.

Credit: Joe Sacco.

From cradle to grave is journey of a day
They say the adhan at dawn, and by evening, funeral they pray
If the fire doesn’t consume them, the cold makes hay
Months of suffering but the world watches — hearts of clay
They put 355 bullets through Hind, the scared little fledge
And blew off Sidra’s legs, left her dead, hanging from a ledge

Born in a inferno, there’s nothing to eat
Watching their kids, the mothers entreat
Foraging for food, the fathers become fresh meat
Suckling their thumbs, the infants only know the war’s drumbeat
They devoured the soul of Khaled’s soul, Reem
And told Salem: here, take 30 kilograms of your Ibrahim

The innocent beings don’t know why their father went away
“Where’s my mother?” she was always a cry away
Dazed and confused they shiver all day
Through mud they drag their stumps. Have you seen them play?
They ran over Motasem’s son with a bulldozer, tore him asunder
And killed Khaled whose mother cried defiant, “he wasn’t just a number”

Yazan wasted to death, starving for a morsel of bread
He was lucky, for Ahmad was buried without his head
Did you see the father handing chocolate to his son long dead?
And the one with the days-old twins? “They were born smiling,” he said
They devoured Refaat’s grandson, all of two months old
And Yahya could do no more but witness his twins freeze in the cold

This massacre of the innocents makes the heavens cry
For it breaks the most scared of the covenants consecrated up high
Why must the birds of Gaza die?
To become green birds, flitting and floating and soaring in God’s sky
That’s the source of sumud for the mother who lost both Mariam and Aqil
And still she went, “hasbunallahu wa ni’mal wakil”

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