“Aleppo… Mon Amour”
A hospital destroyed in a bombing raid – soon forgotten.
In the old quarter of Aleppo
A flickering festoon of broken bulbs
And blasted bunting surrounds the souk
Within the cables’ crackling sparking
A whispering can be heard,
“Shahid…Shahid…Shahid… Shahid.”
In the third cut of the night
The silence of darkness
Is rent by a mother’s cry
As she tenderly wipes dust from the faces
Of her husband, father, new born child
Found in the rubble of the kitchen
Of the house where they once lived.
“Shahid…Shahid…Shahid”
A husband finds his wife
Clutching her son to her breast in death,
Tight against white phosphorous rain
The gnawing burning
Too quick, too hot to flee.
“Shahid…Shahid.”
A barrel bomb crater in Tilel Street
filled by a ruptured water main
Becomes a lido where
Child survivors of last night’s raids
Splash themselves cool
Against the heat of the heat.
Some shoot marbles
At spent bullet skittles
Songs of praise and supplication
Ascend to paradise
Against the incoming mortar storm
Smashing marble pavements
Mosques, basilicas, hamams
To common dust.
One child speaks her dream of freedom
She does not know what freedom means
She expects it to be something beautiful.
This one wants her father back
She waves her arm
“He has gone away”
She longs to hug him
He has died.
Her face twitches with grief
She has forgotten how to cry.
A man picks oranges from a courtyard tree
A child’s dress flutters on a branch
Where doves once perched
He fills his bag and carefully treads
Through the shards
Stepping around the blood
Redding a toddler’s first shoe.
A dog gnaws at a bone
Michel Abdou Youssef,
Tends to the needs of the senile
In the Mar Elias sanctuary for the elderly,
He is the self appointed janitor, nurse.
Michel is only fifty three but has seen too much,
Through cigarettes and suffering
He looks much older
He never quite made fifty four,
“Shahid.”
You have created a window into a moment in the madness and hate that besets Syria… consumes Syria. Personalisation of events makes people think, doesn’t it. I thought you did this very well, Coolhermit.
I tried to avoid the ‘eezy rite’ standard cliches of war and how it affects civilians. Aiming instead for evocative snap shots – thanks, Griffonner 🙂
Stunning and yes, mercifully cliche free and reads well and powerfully aloud. Bravo, sirrah!
Avoidance of cliche is like traversing a minefield – thanks for the confirmation that I succeeded – I read it in a pub on the afternoon of my first draft – I was still affected by the images and words I’d been battling with all morning – some did not subsequently survive – anyhow I had to go home early, too emotional.
Thanks for your kind words
Rick.