September 24, 2023Exile is No Country
for Sabra and Shatila
The trees burned first, ablaze in the inferno of exile.
The tsunami of death drowned the ones washed up by exile.
Soldiers surrounded the camps, then set up flares for the killers.
Knives shone in the dark, a steely passage to exile.
The killers hated them because they were in their land.
They came because they were refugees, forced into exile.
The alleys were littered with bodies, knifed, machine-gunned.
The corpses twisted in choreographed despair: oh exile!
Dust settled thick on the broken stones. Flies clustered everywhere.
Wrecked buildings marked the camp’s collapse into exile.
The reporters stopped counting bodies after they reached a hundred.
Children and grandparents sprawled in death’s terrible exile.
The orchestrators watched through binoculars as the murderers worked.
They wanted the victims dead, not just in exile.
Youth taken by surprise fell like crumpled puppets, limbs outflung.
Blood pooled beneath their bodies, staining the dirt of exile.
Pregnant women lay with their bellies slashed open—
babes torn from their wombs, condemned to a lifeless exile.
The bodies piled up in stacks: horses and corpses.
Bulldozers scooped the dead to rubble-filled exile.
Word traveled across oceans in time for the evening news.
TV corpses brought the dead to their families in echoes of exile.
Hands flung wide, mourners still clutch at the broken air.
Their lungs struggle for breath in the vacuum of exile.
Who will comfort the children of Sabra, the mothers of Shatila?
What light can they find in the ravaged lanes of exile?
At the port there is no boat waiting, only sailors with dirges.
Memory sinks to the depths, carrying the grief of exile.
The days and the years glided away with my loved ones.
Oh Palestinians, it is a departure without return from exile!
from Poets Respond