“The Children of Aleppo”, poem

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Suffer the little children……

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The Children of Aleppo

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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.

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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.

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A dead canary in his cage

“Oh, the poor thing!”

Abandoned by its owners

As 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.

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The children of Aleppo

Are free and children again

Only in their dreams,

And perhaps, if you believe so,

After death.

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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?

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The children of Aleppo

Have no future as children.

Suffer the little children,

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, 2014-2015, originally published in “Pitcher of Moon”, 2014, Amazon.com, by Jane Kohut-Bartels