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 6th 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 13th 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