In the Memory of the Pirate 2

In the Memory of the Pirate 2

By Tarif Youssef Agha

I wrote this poem in 2006, in the 6^th memorial of the death of Assad Sr. (as the second part of a previous poem with the same title) predicting the Arab-Spring. It was never published before.

Oh Ruler, sorry but

The Homeland can’t be contained in a ruler

If history would mention people like you

Then it would say that you re-enforced your thrones with skulls

And that in order to reach those thrones

You climbed on ladders which you made from the limbs of your people

You came from the nests of illiteracy and unawareness

Whoever listens to your speeches thinks they are riddles

Did you really believe that you were unrepeatable in history?

With all the crimes your regime committed

Or that God sent you to the people as a response to their request?

With all the feasts your regime had serving the corpses of your innocent victims

I don’t think that you forgot how

You hanged people without trials

And how you dug mass graves

And filled their tummies with people without ceremonies

If you call that a historical act

Even Hulago entered history, but as an animal. (The Mongol conqueror of the 13^th century)

Didn’t you really know

Why your people hated you?

Why they were, day and night,

Dreaming to separate your head from your body?

And to prepare for you and your officers execution town-squares

Where you are taken on your four limbs

Don’t be glad you reached your grave in one piece

As graves can be reopened when the time is right

You don’t need a fortune teller to tell you that

That day is, no doubt, coming

It is coming when the people reclaim their dignity

And the breezes of freedom arrive in the Homeland

***

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 December 12, 2014, Houston, Texas

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