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