By Yanis Iqbal

Palestine: a carpet of cadavers, a swamp of blood, a garden of ashen smoke.

Olive green of missiles, iron fists of tanks, the blue-black of high caliber guns –

Can a place be mangled by mere metals?

Underneath the wounded flesh of the surface

(Fume-caked anemones, tortured olives, scarlet seas of barbwires)

Capillaries of clouds sail endlessly in the dripping entrails of earth,

Knitting sapphires of the azure after every airstrike on UN schools;

Wrinkled roots of young oak trees broaden and maturate,

Sheltering displaced, sooty-cheeked kids under the boughs of its leafy shadow.

Scarred by the living heat of everything,

Occupiers promise hell…that’s all they can do.

Shred homes to a few sobbing stones,

Cushions of grasses will emerge from the detritus.

Clog the cheeks of soil with tear gas canisters,

Layers of defiant light will unfold from the glands of ground.

Bomb children in sleep as they dream of shattering the skulls of siege,

A thousand stone-wielding children will rattle the universe with their fortitude.

Send in the combat-clad murderers,

Pile heaps of bodies on streets of songs;

Pierce the air with bone-breaking bullets;

Drown the place in hoof-beats of rifles;

Another will shatter the rock-faced barricades

Another will smash the barrels of guns

Another will wipe from our shoulders

The dust and blood fallen from our necks.

– Yanis Iqbal is an independent researcher and freelance writer based in Aligarh, India and can be contacted at yanisiqbal@gmail.com. He contributed this poem to The Palestine Chronicle.