You bleed again as the world watches
In civilized wisdom;
As you take little babies for burial,
With fresh bombs bursting behind
Before and on you,
The Zionists feel threatened by your resolve.
Such is your prowess:
No lion is thought quite dead till dead.
And you are not about to die either,
Take it from me.
The Zionist barbarians have had good teachers;
They did not suffer
At the hands of the Nazis for nothing.
Admiring their dour beastliness,
They said the Nazis are dead,
Let us be the Nazis.
And the yanks said
These are our Nazis, so beware.
For now we can only sing of your ideals,
Your courage, your history
And write poems;
But no reckoning is forever delayed.
Even now there are ears that hear,
Eyes that see,
And minds that are made.
We cannot save your babies,
Your women,
Your home and hearth,
Such as they are,
But be sure there will be that reckoning.
It is in the making.
Who knows how, when, or where
It will bring the beasts to book.
Who knows when the light of justice
Will shine,
But shine it will.
We know you have no doubt of that.
So let your wounds water afresh
The tree-trunk of your immutable soul.
The new leaves will have more blood
And the new branches more muscle.
The sight of that perennial growth alone
Will strike terror to the terroriser
Driving him to madness and self-destruction.
Palestine, you are the earth itself;
What have you not borne, seen, suffered,
And, like the earth’s, the victory will be yours.
- Badri Raina
