Lament of a Dead Palestinian Child.

An Elegy by Riyaz Latif

Palestinian children play next to a section of the separation barrier built by Israel in the West Bank town of Bethlehem. Photograph: Muhammed Muheisen/AP

Riyaz Latif

I handed them to you
sodden in blood the edges
of my blameless entrails –
all the adornments of charred flesh –
fiery lands and waters
of sinking veins
of soft skin
turning to vapor –
crushed harvests of splintered bones –

I handed them to you
all the stars strewn
in my smooth gentle golden hair –

I handed them to you
each atom of my weeping land –
all the roads rising
from my choking suffering land
from the cage
that reached
the broken, severed, torn embracing arms
of my mother
of my father

I handed it to you
today
my tyrannized deceased face –
In its depths
why could you not see
all the ruined torqued faces
of your very own guileless mother
that in the lush season of flowers
were interminably scorched smelted
in the noxious extinction-abodes of Auschwitz –
In the path of the dust
settling on my deceased face –

**

******

Cover image courtesy: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/21/a-hidden-universe-of-suffering-the-palestinian-children-sent-to-jail

Riyaz Latif is a bilingual poet and translator. He teaches art history at FLAME University, Pune, India.
Riyaz Latif in The Beacon