In protest: poetics of resistance

Poetry often serves a critical function in refusal, survival, and witness in the face of atrocity. Here are a few poems I’ve returned to again.

DON’T ASK ME FOR THAT LOVE AGAIN
Faiz Ahmed Faiz, trans. Agha Shahid Ali

The Rebels’s Silhouette, Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1995

That which then was ours, my love,
don’t ask me for that love again.
The world then was gold, burnished with light –
and only because of you. That’s what I had believed.
How could one weep for sorrows other than yours?
How could one have any sorrow but the one you gave?
So what were these protests, these rumours of injustice?
A glimpse of your face was evidence of springtime.
The sky, whenever I looked, was nothing but your eyes.
If you’d fall into my arms, Fate would be helpless.

All this I’d thought, all this I’d believed.
But there were other sorrows, comforts other than love.
The rich had cast their spell on history:
dark centuries had been embroidered on brocades and silks.
Bitter threads began to unravel before me
as I went into alleys and in open markets
saw bodies plastered with ash, bathed in blood.
I saw them sold and bought, again and again.
This too deserves attention. I can’t help but look back
when I return from those alleys – what should one do?
And you are still so ravishing – what should I do?
There are other sorrows in this world,
comforts other than love.
Don’t ask me, my love, for that love again.

WE LIVED HAPPILY DURING THE WAR
Ilya Kaminsky

Poetry International, 2013 

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we

protested,
but not enough. We opposed them but not

enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America

was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.

I took a chair outside and watched the sun.

in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)

lived happily during the war.

LEAVING CHILDHOOD BEHIND
Mosab Abu Toha

Banipal, 2021

When I left, I left my childhood in the drawer
and on the kitchen table. I left my toy horse
in its plastic bag.
I left without looking at the clock.
I forget whether it was noon or evening.

Our horse spent the night alone,
no water, no grains for dinner.
It must have thought we’d left it to cook a meal
for late guests or make a cake
for my sister’s tenth birthday.

I walked with my sister towards our road with no end point.
We sang a birthday song,
The hovering war planes echoed across the heaven.

My tired parents strolled behind,
my father clutching to his chest
the keys to our house and to the stable.

We arrived at a rescue station.
News of ceaseless strikes roared on the radio.
I hated death, but I hated life, too,
when we had to walk to our prolonged death,
reciting our never-ending ode.

I AM EXPLAINING A FEW THINGS
Pablo Neruda, trans. Nathanial Tarn

Pablo Neruda Selected Poems: A Bilingual Edition, Houghton Mifflin, 1970

You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?

I'll tell you all the news.

I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.

From there you could look out
over Castille's dry face:
a leather ocean.
           My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.
             Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafel?
       Federico, do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
          Brother, my brother!
Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,
       stacked-up fish,
the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings --
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives!

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain:
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.

And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?

Come and see the blood in the streets,
come and see
the blood in the streets,
come and see the blood
in the streets!