*“Poetry after Auschwitz”, Adorno says, is barbaric. But Consider the darkness and the great cold, /In this vale which resounds with mystery. Brecht completes the sentence, and it seems as if he stopped short of naming the vale which is Gaza.

In another poem, he says “In the dark times /Will there also be singing? /Yes, there will also be singing. /About the dark times.”

When a tragedy is soul-wrenching, and the struggle is so one-dimensional that one side is mercilessly slaughtered in cold blood while humanity in its numbness watches the carnage in alienated silence, poetry for the oppressed becomes an integral part of their struggle. Perhaps that is why Freud said, “Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me”.

Before becoming the target of assassination by the IDF better called IOF (Israeli Occupation Force) the famous Palestinian poet and professor of English Rafat Alareer wrote a poem. I will take the liberty to recite a few lines, “If I must die/ you must live/To tell my story/ To sell my things/ If I must die/ Let it bring hope/ Let it be a tale.

Inspired by his poem and disgusted by Zionism’s metaphor of “Mowing the Lawn” I added

If I have to live

The occupation must end,

If I have to die: For which I am not shy,

It would barely matter: If the fountain of my blood drained by the Zionists, remained unseen

But once it seeps into my land

It must water the planted seeds,

Seeds for the immortal flowers: And when they bloom: they cannot be mowed by the tanks of the enemy,

They would act like mines: in my Palestine, laid in the ways of my enemy.

To explode if they are mowed.

To leave a message of a long-protracted war

Where heads would roll: But not of our kids: As you Zionists always bid

But of your men: Who will die in our dens,

Like a beast of prey

We will hunt them down,

In the twilight of the evening: And in the brightness of the day

We will teach you the same: Which you taught us with little shame,

If only one of us has to remain: It’s we who will outlive: the unleashed carnage and the wrath of the sky.

If might is on your side: Our weapon would be the sacrifice: which will make you implode.

If we have to die: You won’t live either,

A promise we are making of taking you to Hades,

And making you cry, on the battlefield: And in the corners of your homes

Begging for your life: to see another day when the crimson sun,

Drenched and drowned in our blood, rises again,

Your bodies will shiver in its frozen light—with damning fright

Death will knock at your doors hidden behind the walls: You built very tall with apartheid bricks,

The doors and wall: will creek and fall

Enter our souls through the alleyways of your crimes,

Slain by you in unlit pathways,

The Walking Dead will escort you: to where you belong: to the graveyard of history,

To inter your remains: In Nazis’ domain

For you mowed our lawns: Where our kids once played,

And death was the price:........

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