I Made My Pen a Gun

I Made My Pen a Gun

In the 51st anniversary of the military coup that brought the socialist Baath Party to power in Syria

I made my pen a gun

To fight those who took my country as a hostage

I turned its ink into bullets

And loaded with words that explode like fragments

If it was in my hand, I would dissolve

The Baath party and classify it as a terrorist party

It spent the last fifty years burning the Homeland

And making itself a ride to every killer

It donated the Golan Heights to Israel as a gift

And used Palestine as a merchandise while calling it (the cause)

It handed Syria to a butcher-family

That came to be known as a holy one

Thus, corruption and theft became the name of the Baath party

And killing started to happen according to the ID

The Russians were given military bases on our homeland

While the whole of Syria was given to Iran as a slave-mistress

And as if all that were not enough,

Persian and Russian were made official languages in our country

We swear we will not forgive your crimes, you Baath party

And we will not let you live in peace after all that you did

It is time that you write your death will

We swear we will make you pay the price

And Syria, as usual, will be forbidden to parties like you

***

A Poem translation

(Can be shared without permission)

Tarif Youssef-Agha

An Expatriate Arab Syrian Writer & Poet

Member of the ‘Syrian Revolutionary Writers Assembly’

Monday March 10, 2014, Houston, Texas

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