The bombings have begun.
Sharp splinters of smooth, shiny bombs
Penetrate into the rugged dreams of Palestinian emancipation
Blinding, bruising, and burying it under the soot of crushing colonialism.
Amid the bombardment, shaky screams of subjugated children
Rend the sky into flakes of agony,
Each flake swirling in a vortex of indescribable pain,
Clenching in its fist the veined heart of torment
And inscribing on the parcels of war-blemished sky
The trembling letters of liberation.
Out of the cinders of bombings,
Out of the excruciating eyes of pained children,
Emerges something fluid,
Something that flows in the arteries of begrimed struggle,
Floats in the vacuum of violence
And trudges through the twisted topographies of bullets.
That thing is hope.
Hope that seeps through the soil of longing
Hope that bleeds due to bombings
Yet, never dies and carries the lamp of freedom through the darkness of war.
Yanis Iqbal is an independent writer
SIGN UP FOR COUNTERCURRENTS DAILY NEWSLETTER
