A Salute to The Free Syrian Army

Three weeks ago, I recognized The Syrian National Council as the only legitimate representative of the Syrian Arab people who are seeking freedom and dignity through a peaceful revolution. A panel from The Council met yesterday with one from The Free Syrian Army, who also sided with the revolution, where both recognized each other. Therefore I like to delegate this poem to our new born Army as an appreciation to its bravery and sacrificing.

A salute to The Free Syrian Army

By Tarif Youssef Agha

We lived to see a free army defending

The Syria that was oppressed for decades

An army defending the people

Against every murderer and hater

An army whose members understood the meaning of honor

They, therefore, turned themselves to be the fuel of dignity

As the other army we knew before was

The one who fled Golan expelled

The one who scored victory in Daraa, Hama and Al-Rastan

But had a date with the defeat in the Golan

It called itself the ideological army

As its ideology forbids going back to the Golan

And forbids any one else

By building all kinds of road blocks in their way

The army who received slaps from Israel but claimed

That the decision to retaliate doesn’t exist

The one who took ‘commission’ from traders

And who ‘protected’ smuggling across the borders

The one who committed massacres in cities and jails

And who burned and skinned the living

The one who ran from Lebanon as rabbits, but

Attacked its people as lions

Whenever an army attacks its people,

The door of dialogue between them closes forever

It repeated endless and empty slogans

Slogans that only stupid people believed

Slogans such as resistance, forbiddance and solidarity

And from struggle to the ‘Front of Confront and Defy’

But all that it did was to divide the Arabs into two parties

It separated the brothers and revoked the treaties

The massacre of Hama doesn’t need documenting

And Tal-Al-Zaater (massacre) doesn’t need witnesses

An army who was a giant with his people, but a dwarf with the enemy

Stabbed the people in the back and broke the promises

It invited the criminals, the smugglers and the thieves to join

So the free officers and soldiers deserted

The army of Syria was established in the past

By the homeland honoraries of our parents and grand parents

From Youssef Al-Azmah to Al-Maliki

Heroes who made the army as their personal responsibility

They fought the colonial, as well as the occupation

But they never fought their people as if they were Jews

The free Syrians today are restoring the army its reputation

They are breaking the chains that was forced on the people

They are protecting the people from rabid dogs

Every one of them is paying the ultimate price of freedom

The free Syrians are returning today

To take care of the new, reborn army

***

Poetry by: Tarif Youssef-Agha

An expatriate Arab Syrian Writer & Poet

Houston, Texas

Friday, November 11, 2011

http://sites.google.com/site/tarifspoetry