The Ceasefire of Al-Akhdar

About three months ago, Al-Akhdar Al-Ebraheeme succeeded Kofi Anan as the envoy of both, the Arab-League and the UN, to stop the massacres in Syria. He, last week, came with a not well prepared ‘ceasefire’ plan that did not only fail, but also increased the killing. Al-Akhdar in Arabic means the green color.

The Ceasefire of Al-Akhdar

By Tarif Youssef Agha

Al-Akhdar announced that he had no plan

But just ideas which

He wished to make them work

Then he traveled around the world to return and surprise us

With a ceasefire that was nothing

But a joke

A ceasefire without watchers or penalties is

A ceasefire that had no better name than

Chatter

It was even more than that

It was a clearance

To justify the crimes of the killer

The world sees

In the blood rivers (of Syria)

Nothing but a puzzling crisis

***

He called the ceasefire of the ‘Good will’

Then sat down and expected a big miracle

Miracles like dead people walk out of the graveyards!

Asking a killer to show good will is as

Asking the devil to

Ask for forgiveness!

Or as asking the snake not to bite!

Or asking the alcoholic to forget

The way to the liqueur store!

Who does expect not to die he gets close to a killer flood?

Who does expect not to be burned if he shakes hand with fire?

Who doesn’t expect thorns from cactus?

Who doesn’t expect bitterness from caster oil?

What kind of ‘Good Will’ you expect from a child slaughter?

From ‘him’ who turned the homeland into

A massacre square

From that who broke the fingers of the cartoonist

And killed the poet

And removed the throat of the singer

Nero was called a butcher after he burned a city

Whereas our ‘Nero’ burned a whole country

And he is receiving messengers and negotiators

If I was asked to evaluate this ceasefire

I wouldn’t say more than that

‘It put a piece of sugar in the killer’s mouth’

***

Poem translation

Tarif Youssef-Agha

An Expatriate Arab Syrian Writer & Poet

Member of the ‘Syrian Revolutionary Writers Assembly’

Houston, Texas

Friday November 1, 2012

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