15/10/2023
By Devdan Chaudhuri *
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.
Source: https://countercurrents.org/2023/10/14-october-2023-a-poem/
Emma Olive 