The Assad regime committed a horrifying massacre in Duma, also famous as the city of grape, in the eastern Damascus suburbs. It started on February 5, 2015 and lasted for one week; he used rockets loaded with poison gas that killed more than one hundred civilians and injured about a thousand.
If you plan to visit Duma
By Tarif Youssef Agha
If you plan to visit Duma, then don’t forget
To take with you flowers for its graves
As the butcher (Assad) who overtook Nero in reputation
Hammered the city with fire from his hatred
He leveled its houses to the ground
And rained upon its children with rockets
The city of grape became the city of death
Its streets became rivers of blood
Everything took place in front of the whole world
The world which just condemns or finds excuses
Half of it supports those crimes secretly
The other half does it openly
“Damn” the so called world leaders who watch our people blown away in pieces
Watch them every morning while enjoying a cop of coffee and a cigarette
History will spit at them every time tragedies are mentioned
It will stamp those crimes on their foreheads in shame
But also damn this time when killing became a career
While hypocrisy and dishonesty became skills
The snipers are occupying the roofs of the buildings
And the walkers in the streets are falling down, even though they are not drunk
Oh Syria, God bless you
No people were oppressed as yours were
But they will rise up from the ashes
To break the chains and destroy the walls
To raise their heads and scream
“We are the people’s who confronted the whole world”
They will keep fighting until they retrieve their dignity
And I will keep documenting their revolution with my poems
When I plan to visit Duma in the future, I will bring with me
Medals for its heroes and flowers for its graves
***
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 February 20, 2015, Houston, Texas
http://sites.google.com/site/tarifspoetry