حنظله در غزه

Hanzalah in Gaza

Give the coffin of Gaza children to the Nile

Perhaps Moses save them

Perchance Pharaoh

Possibly Asiya

Maybe the UN forces

Perhaps servants of Oil Caliphs

Give the Gaza children coffin to the Nile

No matter it’s a boy or a girl

When the mortars come

Children start playing with gig fans

One alters his voice to a kite

The other changes it to a lamp

And makes his dreams a strand taking lamps up

Look the Mediterranean sky

Is packed with bloody kites

When the bullets come

Children start to play with ball

Look

The wounds are back

The stars are back and the martyrs too

Joseph is back and eleven mortars in each hour

Land on his dreams

Arial Sharon is back

Out of urinary lab tubes in Tel Aviv

The cold is back and the black president too

In the cancer of heat

Ambulances are back and corpses too

Waves are back and poems are poured into streets

Boats are back and turtles too

NATO is back with metal generals

Which their glow is dimed

The Nile pours into Gaza strip

Canaan has migrated to Shojaeiyeh neighborhood

And fresh corpses

Go to the Nile in baskets

There is no Asyia’s bosom

There is no Joseph, no Moses

No one moves nor does anything

Only a barefoot little boy is back

Named Hanzalah

Out of cartoons of Naji Al-Ali

To rescue children from underneath

Of all the watch.

Poem by Alireza Ghazeh

Translated by Mohsen K. Rahjerdi

Center for Translation of Hoze Honari