O… Gaza Students…
Arabic poem
By: Nizar Qabani
Translated by: Adib S. Kawar
O… Gaza Students…
teach us…
we forgot…
Teach us…
How men to become…
Paste our men became..
Teach us…
How stones become…
In our kids hands…
Precious diamonds…
A milk bottle…
If detained…
To a knife it turns to be…
How kids bicycles…
Dynamite they become…
And how a silk ribbon
An ambush it becomes…
O… Gaza students…
Don't bother…
With our broadcasting stations…
Hit…
Hit…
With all your might…
And decide…
And for permission…
You should not request …
Permission or approval that never comes…
We are a people of arithmetic…
Addition…
Subtraction…
Wage your wars…
And abandon us…
Deserters we are…
From the army..
Get your ropes…
And hang us…
Dead we are…
Without graves…
And orphans…
Eyes we don't have…
In our holes we stayed hidden…
And we ordered you…
To fight the dragon!!!
Facing you dwarfed we became…
And retreated…
A thousand centuries…
While in a month…
You grew millennia…
O… Gaza students…
Don't go back to…
Our writings to reread us…
Your fathers we are…
Don't look like us…
Different you should be…
Your idols we are…
But don't worship us…
Addicted we are…
To political kat*…
Oppression…
Grave yards we build…
And prisons…
To liberate us…
From our fear complex
And expel…
Opium from our heads…
Teach us…
The art of adhering to our soil…
And Christ don't leave sad…
Our beloved young ones…
Greetings…
May God make your days…
Jasmines…
From the cracks of our desolated land…
Like jennies …
You sprang out…
And in our wounds…
Musk roses you planted…
This is the copybook's revolution…
And ink…
And on lips be melodies…
Shower us with…
Heroism…
And pride…
This is the Zionist era…
An illusion…
That shall surely collapse…
If the will we have…
You mad people of Gaza…
A thousand greetings...
To the mad…
If they liberate us…
The political mind…
We left behind us…
So madness teach us…
* kat = light narcotic plant which is chewed
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