The earth no longer smiles

Our first post is a poem by Shiba Mitsuyo that was published in Palestine, P.L.O. Information Bulletin, a bi-monthly information bulletin originally published by The Palestine Liberation Organisation Unified Information. Ash did a good job in translating it from Arabic into English!

The earth no longer smiles
Where the children were broken to pieces
Where the anger was buried of those first killed by guns
The earth where the weepeing mothers fell down
Screaming and kissing its clay;
Olive trees pulled out, sheep burned to ashes,
Houses swept down by the sea of flames.

The earth no longer smiles
While people are running away in panic,
While people are driven into the torture chambers in
Bloodstained clothes,
And while people are burnt like firewood in air raids.

Oh my dear children, who walked about the roads
Crying for a school to study in, and a place to pray,
A change of clothes and drink of water.
Yesterday you were on the barricades,
Carrying sandbags in your small arms,
Protecting your mothers with guns in your hands at the doors.

From under the stones of the occupied land,
From the bundles of plundered barley,
From the tombs of the martyred victims,
Were handed down to you the weapons.
Fighters have been born from every house
Rising up to defend their naked lives.

Today you are the soldiers of vanguard,
You are the gentle lovers writing letters
In the blood-soaked hollows.
You will never leave sorrow behind,
You will never escape from unhappiness,
You will redeem your captured brothers Offering yourself to the sacred cause.

You are now captains in the air
Directing the course toward freedom.

Oh Palestine, the burning eye full of hope,
The invincible ranks of the courageous fighters
Who will rise up again and again,
No matter how often the shells may strike them
We see you coming to us all the way
With fighting pens and papers over the word
By fighters with pen and paper all over the world
By workers who print and carry.

A little girl in a wheelchair was reading your message,
And aged poor laborer was clipping your photograph,
Mothers sitting in the fields were firmly shaking your hands,
Protesting against the plunder of their farms by tear-gas bombs
In the silence of the fighters in prison,
In the small demostrations repeated,
In the hunger strikes in the frozen night,
In the eyes gouged out by torture,
In the courts where death sentences were passed,
We see you always in the anguard.

Oh Palestine, the broad passionate breast,
The champion of freedom who brings back the light
And self-confidence to the crushed people.
From the muzzles of your guns will come forth
The love cherished in the long struggles.
When you bring the bright spring back to us
The olive trees will put forth young shoots
From the bullet marks that are left in your body.
The earth will smile again,
Like an infant newly-born.