No, this is no time for poetry


Poem deicated to the Palestinian people by Sukant Chandan

 

Not many were fighting like when you erupted,

You took cover behind those walls,

The defunct enemy you were confronting.

What’s the point of negotiation when all

We receive is provocation upon provocation

No! This is not going to make us fall!

And now we’re stepping up with the armed tactics,

Stones, slings, petrol bombs and sometimes semi-automatics,

And so feel the wrath of the masses

against your armoury which is hi-tech

But the laws of our humanity

Are stronger than all of your artillery.

Their bullets were bursting around me but I wasn’t even there?

But I saw it on the TV and you know I couldn’t hold back my tears,

My people, many the same age of my years

The new generation facing the same enemy without fear.

No! This is no time for poetry,

The imagery that I see is the people’s fury,

And it seems so ugly because we’ve only grown up to see

On the one hand depictions of artificial serenity

Or the brutality of a Rambo tyrannity

But never the people’s wrath against enemy armoury,

So, No! Yo! This is no time for poetry

Only the nitty gritty of struggle’s reality.

I’m spitting about the Palestinian and the Yemeni,

The Cubans would say Yanqui No! Cuba Si!

I say it’s a strike for our people internationally

So No! Yo! This is not time for poetry.

We see helicopters of death in our skies,

In less than two weeks one hundred of our people died,

Two foot soldiers of the beast deceased,

100 to 2, No, that’s not pretty poetry