In the city I live, no one drops any bombs.
Fighter jets don’t deafen; sirens don’t wail.
Houses, with people, don’t turn into rubble in an instant.
Bewildered souls of the newly exploded don’t roam the ashy streets.
In the city I live, no one drops any bombs.
The air doesn’t smell of bleakness and burn.
Children don’t write their names in big letters on their small palms,
To make themselves more identifiable, after a smoky bombardment.
In the city I live, no one drops any bombs.
Electricity, water and communications are not snapped.
Entry and exit points are not sealed off like a wartime siege.
Orphanages, schools and hospitals are not shelled purposely.
In the city I live, no one drops any bombs.
Printed flyers are not showered from the sky,
To tell a million people to run within a day, from the north to the south.
Or else white phosphorous munitions might sting their skin.
In the city I live, no one drops any bombs.
Food isn’t rationed; medicines aren’t hard to get.
Shootings and explosions haven’t erased the sounds of dawn.
Ice cream freezers are not used to keep bodies of babies.
In the city I live, no one drops any bombs.
There is no genocide, ethnic cleansing and collective punishment.
But this Saturday, I rage, I pray, I grieve, I scream;
While thinking about Palestine, Gaza and humanity.
Devdan Chaudhuri is an author, poet and essayist on politics and culture. His poems have featured in ‘Modern English Poetry by Younger Indians’ (Sahitya Akademi, India), ‘Witness: The Poetry of Dissent’ (Red River, India), ‘The Best Asian Poetry 2021’ (Kitaab, Singapore), ‘Converse: Contemporary English Poetry by Indians (Pippa Rann, UK) and on The Punch Magazine.
This poem is an appeal for de-escalation of the crisis in Gaza, immediate stoppage of the bloodshed and the creation of a sovereign Palestine state.
