I dedicate this poem as a gift to the tormented children of my country, and also to the Syrian composer and pianist, my dear friend Malek Jandali, in recognition to "The Voice of the Free Syrian Children" campaign he is leading around the world. He is currently preparing to launch his new work “Syrian Symphony; Phoenix in Exile” from “Carnegie Hall” in NY city, Saturday January 31, 2015.
A Syrian Children’s Symphony
By Tarif Youssef-Agha
They stole the childhood from our children
They forbade them learning how to write and how to read
They stole from them their dreams and kidnapped their future
And left them to live in tents in the open
They didn’t leave them a roof to protect them
Nothing to protect them from the heat of summer and the freeze of winter
They took away from them their right to play and to be loved
They even reduced their food and medicine
And as all that was not enough until
The war lords appeared and forced them to be fighters
They took them from schools to the lines of fire
A behavior that can only be called “coward”
Instead of giving them pens, notebooks and books
They gave them guns to kill with
They replaced letters with bullets and desks with trenches
They canceled the science classes and taught them how to eliminate
Today they took away their childhood from them
And tomorrow they will call them “terrorists” and make them enemies
Children are turned into a fuel for the killing-machine
And a bunch of gangsters makes wealth out of them
Every one is using them as a trade material
Both, the close and the faraway, are selling and buying them
Amongst a butcher regime which pawned the Homeland
Organizations which claim “Jihad”, but practice hypocrisy
And countries which assist one and support another, but
All of them are just funding the funerals of the Syrian children
Oh pigs, the childhood is a red line
Anyone who crosses it, deserves no less than contempt
Damn you, oh despicable world
I lost faith in what is called “humanity”
***
A Poem translation
(Can be shared without permission)
By Tarif Youssef-Agha
An Expatriate Arab Syrian Writer & Poet
Member of the ‘Syrian Revolutionary Writers Assembly’
Friday January 30, 2015, Houston, Texas
http://sites.google.com/site/tarifspoetry