“The Children of Aleppo”

 

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HAS ‘LIKED’ THIS POEM, BUBBA, K.A., YOUSEI,  ETC.  I WILL TRY TO TRACK YOU DOWN AND THANK YOU~!  EVEN THOUGH YOU HAVE READ THIS SOMETIME LAST WEEK.  I REALLY APPRECIATE THE SUPPORT FOR THIS POEM.

I posted this poem a few days last week, but took it down, I think for rework.  I’m posting it again for a particular reason, for a particular website.  This poem was submitted to The New Yorker and we will see if they publish this.  It will be published in PoetCRIT Journal this July in Mumbai, India.

Gary Hart, of Gary Hart Photography in California, wrote a lovely comment on  (www.GaryHartFacebook.com) about “Pitcher Of Moon”.  Gary supplied the cover photo.  It made the book look wonderful.  Thank you, Gary.  And thank you Nick, Steve and the good and sane people in my life.

Lady Nyo

–

The Children of Aleppo

 

There is no childhood in Aleppo.

There are little martyrs-in-the-making

Where 5 year olds and 8 year olds

Wish for a ‘family death’

Where they can die together

With their parents

Where they live in peace in Heaven

Never tasting the fruits of peace on Earth.

–

There is no childhood in Aleppo.

The children haunt the abandoned  dwellings

Of friends who have fled the city.

There they find abandoned teddy bears

While looking for guns for the rebels, their fathers.

–

“Oh, the poor thing!”

A dead canary in his cage

Abandoned by its owners

They flee the rockets, bombs

And mortars.

In the face of daily death

The sight of this bird

Evokes a child’s sorrow.

But the gunfire outside continues

(They are used to the noise)

And huddle in the pockmarked

Halls until safe to scatter.

–

The children of Aleppo

 Have no teachers, doctors.

These have fled the cities, schools

But they still pine for ice cream,

For music in the streets,

For curtains not torn by violence,

For books and toys

And gardens and flowers,

For friends that have not died

Innocent blood splattering

The dirty cobble stones

At their feet.

–

The children of Aleppo

Are free and children again

Only in their dreams,

And perhaps, if you believe so,

After death.

–

How do you put back the brains

Of a child in the cup of the shattered skull?

How do you soothe the howls of the mothers

The groans of the fathers in grief?

How do you comfort the left-alive siblings?

–

The children of Aleppo

Have no future as children.

Suffer the little children here,

They are the sacrifice of parents

And factions,

And politicians

All with the blood of

10,000 children

Who have died 

In a country torn

By immeasurable violence.

–

The beautiful children of Aleppo

Like children everywhere

Still want to chase each other

In the gardens, on playgrounds,

Want to dance in the streets,

Want to pluck flowers for their mothers

And they still pine for ice cream.

–

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2014

Tags: "Pitcher of Moon" Gary Hart, "The Children of Aleppo", (www.GaryHartFacebook.com), dversepoets.com, India, life is weird, Mumbia, POETCRIT Journal, poetry, thankful for honest and sane people, The New Yorker mag