Don’t Tell Me About All Your Ghost Children – Poems For Syria, by Valentina Meloni

 

Letter from a Syrian child to his mother

 

Mom, you never told me

that you can die even as you breathe

I believed that to die

it would take a wound,

a crack from which life

could gush out along with the blood …

Mom, you never told me

that you can die playing

among the stones and the dust

of the road that saw me run.

You never told me

you’d greet me from so far away

and that, crying, your soul

would come to claim me.

Mom, you never told me

that you can die breathing in a dream,

that even air can be a poison.

You didn’t tell me

I’d be an angel of glass,

asleep, in a white shroud.

Mom you never told me

death would make me bright and beautiful

sweeping away the fear of bombs.

Mom …  however,

yesterday, while I was playing with death

I couldn’t tell you

How fond I am and how much I love you

 

English language version from the Italian original by the author, Valentina Meloni

Note

22/08/2013 This poem was written after the chemical attack on Ghouta. On September 16, 2013, a UN independent team, in charge of verifying whether chemical weapons had been used in Syria, delivered its final report to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. The 38 page report confirmed that “chemical weapons have been used on a relatively large scale in the conflict by both parties in Syria, even against the civilian population, including children.”  

 

Published in the Italian language anthology  “Voci contro la guerra” (Voices Against War) by Onirica Edizioni, as well as in the anthology “Ho conosciuto Gerico” (I Have Known Jericho, an out-of-print,  historic 2013 volume by Edizioni Ursini).

 

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Aleppo’s Children

 

Aleppo’s children dive

into the open craters made by bombs

the same ones that killed

their siblings, their friends, the very ones

 

the children of Aleppo play

with the water they no longer have

they joyfully move amid the rubble

and play with abandon

 

they are children and have to get wet

forget the horrors of war

as they are forgotten by the consciences of others

abandoned in a city of ghosts

 

the children of Aleppo cry

over their siblings’ corpses they are acquainted

with the desperation of powerlessness

they know the terror of being here now

 

and then no more. They barely survive,

the children of Aleppo, they are small

people who are older than their parents

more desperate more aware more

 

defenseless and frailer that’s why they dare

death they want to live, the children

of Aleppo like all children

they want to smile and hold hope in the future

 

there aren’t children in Aleppo

they are no longer there what remains

is a city of ghosts where the children

bathe in open craters

 

made by the bombs and they hold hands

while they dive into them, they look deep

into memory’s eyes then silently

say goodbye, they are afraid of disappearing

 

-into that crater –and see each other no more

 

2016

Translated from Italian by Pina Piccolo

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Landai – Song for Aleppo in Twelve Couplets

 

1.

Don’t tell me, I beg you, don’t tell me….

Halab, of all your ghost children.

 

2.

No one is safe anymore

On your citadel on the hill… Halab!

 

3.

Look, the children of Aleppo…

They bathe in craters made by the bombs!

 

4.

Aleppo, the Gray One! Aleppo

Even mountains weep for your fall.

 

5.

Halab! Halab! My dear Halab!

Where are, please do tell me, all its peoples?

 

6.

All of its nine gates…

Now, Halab, they all lead to death.

 

7.

In the garden behind my house

In Aleppo the birds are no longer nesting.

 

8.

Along the streets of Aleppo

Children all alone roam like ghosts.

 

9.

Here on the mountains, flowers

No longer spread their fragrance around, Halab!

 

10.

Aleppo is our city…

But Aleppo will also be our grave!

 

11.

Your walls are falling, Halab,

And take with them the crying of children…

 

12.

Are you asleep too, my little girl

In our demolished home, just like your doll?

 

Translated from Italian  by Pina Piccolo

 

Parts of the poem were published in the book “Aleppo c’è”, (AAVV, Kipple-Aleppo, 2017).

 

These poems, in their original Italian language, as well as a whole series on Syrian children by Valentina Meloni have appeared here in La Macchina Sognante n. 17.

 

Valentina Meloni was born in Rome in 1976. She  has been writing poetry, essays, aphorisms and short stories for several years. She has published five books of poetry, and two books of illustrated fairy tales. Valentina has also issued several numbered chap-books. Her texts have been translated into English, French, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Bulgarian and Spanish. Her work has appeared in international blogs, journals and dailies. She is a Voice Ambassador for Poetry Sound Library. Valentina writes for literary and cultural magazines and for  her eco-poetry and deep ecology blogs.  Contact Valentina Meloni at www.valentinameloni.com

 

 

Cover image: Artwork by Irene De Matteis.