a poem for Palestine
by Maliha Iqbal
by Maliha Iqbal
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| Thousands of people attended a joint Israeli-Palestinian memorial ceremony for victims of the conflict in Tel Aviv on Monday night, running the gauntlet of a handful of right-wing activists who shouted hated slogans. —Haaretz, April 24, 2023. Photo by Gili Getz, The Times of Israel, April 25, 2023. |
The last thing that survives
When the frightened mother
Hides her littler children behind her
In the face of the hard glint of a soldier’s gun
The last thing that survives
When the eldest child loses his childhood and innocence
Because he is the only one left
To look after his little brothers and sisters
The last thing that survives
When the soldier stares at the picture
Of his dead daughter and crouches down,
Wishing to shut himself off from the world and sob forever
The last thing that survives
When little children lying in hospital beds
With IV drips attached to their arms
Smile through the bandages at their parents
To give them something to go on
The last thing that survives
When everything is covered with thick choking smoke
Like a massive cloud has crashed on earth
And all you see around yourself
Are dead bodies floating in the cloud
You vaguely recall the boom of the bomb
And the gunfire that shattered the windows of your home
The smoke strangles you, makes you tear up
But you don’t care because
You have just remembered the scream of your loved ones
And right now you are too busy looking for them
The last thing that survives the night of war
Is the love that waits for the break of dawn.
Maliha Iqbal is a student and writer based in Aligarh, India. Many of her short stories, write-ups, letters and poems have been published on platforms Live Wire (The Wire), Creativity Webzine, Cerebration, Histolit, Countercurrents, Times of India, The Palestine Chronicle, Freedom Review, ArmChair Journal, Counterview, Good Morning Kashmir, Writers’ Cafeteria, Café Dissensus, Borderless Journal, The Cadre Journal and Indian Periodical. She can be reached at malihaiqbal327(at)gmail.com.
