What if it were you…? – A poem dedicated to the Syrian people

As the sun rises,
As the new day awakens,
There’s no morning cheer,
No blissful glowing sky,
No bright new day of life, hope and possibility.
No, as the sun rises,
So do the bombs,
The shells,
And the bullets.

As the sun rises,
So do the screams and the heartbroken cries
Of a mother whose baby lies lifeless in her arms,
Of the orphaned child whose hopes and dreams are
snatched away so cruelly in a single second,
Of a husband whose heart has been twisted, crushed
and shattered into a million pieces…

No, no blissful glowing sky,
No hopes,
No dreams,
No possibilities,
No cheer.

Instead, there lies a bloody cursed battlefield
Where the streets cry out with waves of blood,
Where the walls crumble with sorrow and fear,
Where the earth knows nothing but death and
destruction.

No, instead here lies a blazing battlefield a million
miles away…
A million miles away from your shores,
A million miles away from your doorstep,
A million miles away from you.

But what if it were you?
What if it were your mother,
Your child,
Your soul,
Your heart,
Your everything?
What if it were you?

What if it wasn’t them,
What if it wasn’t “the other”,
The “stranger”,
The “foreigner”?
No…
What if it were you…?

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Dedicated to the global Syrian community, and in particular those in the besieged area of Eastern Ghouta.

Take action:

Support families in crisis across Eastern Ghouta, sign and share the petition calling on the Syrian and Russian governments to immediately lift the siege on Eastern Ghouta.

Copyright:

Poem: Arif-Fear. E (2019) What If It Were You? A Collection of Human Rights Poetry, Shepheard-Walwyn, London (copyright – all rights reserved)