………………………………….Names Lost in the Count
………………………………………………………
The world speaks in digits now.
“37 killed, 20 injured”
Death now serves as ornament for the news headlines.
“50 killed, 80 injured”
Human flesh, scratched to cold numbers.
“23 killed, 45 injured”
Corpses now subjected to fatuous calculations.
The children of the olive groves
each body folded into a figure
each name a footnote in an endless spreadsheet that tires a human eye.
“This is not a genocide.”
This is arithmetic.
A subtraction of heads
an addition through annexation
a multiplication of lies
a division of homes
an algebra of annihilation.
“This is not occupation”
This is a reflection of colonization
driven by the lords of “law and liberty”
whose moral compass spins in the blood of the innocents.
The cries from the Nakba survivors
ascending through the smoke
are heard by all heavens
except those on Earth
for screams heard so often by human ears become
silence.
Yet,
the Gaza soil nurtures the resistance
with the freedom dreams archived under rubbles as its seeds,
with the crimson rain of blood as its water, and
the tombs without epitaphs as its roots.
by Abdul Basit
(To the people of Palestine)
(To the people of Palestine)
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.