A Syrian Children’s Symphony

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