Two Poems for the Tenth Anniversary of the U.S. Invasion of Iraq
(View translation at Lana Turner: A Journal of Poetry and Opinion)
MR. AMERICA
by Sargon Boulus
Death
He’s a gentleman
From America
Who came to drink
From the Tigris
And the Euphrates.
Death
He’s a thirsty gentleman
Who’ll drink all that’s in our wells
Of oil, and all the
Water
From our rivers.
Death
He’s a hungry gentleman
Who eats our children by the thousands
Thousands after thousands
Of thousands
This gentleman
He came from America
To drink the blood
In the Tigris
And the Euphrates.
GOD IS SILENT, TOO
(2008)
by Saadi Yousef
The news that reaches me directly from Revolution City,[1] in Baghdad, is truly disturbing.
The last letter I received was from a man I don’t know. An American missile fell near his
home. He tells me that American missiles and bombs target exposed civilians. The man
is a follower of neither al-Sadr nor his army, so his report hasn’t been tainted.
Are the Americans in such a hurry to subdue Iraq?
Do they see time as a weapon that has been turned against them?
Yesterday, the city of Basra, the Oasis City, faced the most violent of shellings and air
raids.
The Americans and the British carried out that massacre.
And the massacre continues today under the banner of “the arrest of wanted
persons.”
It’s Revolution City’s turn:
The plans that developed long ago and the investigative missions that went on and on
are putting the inevitable into action these days.
The main issues in Revolution City are far off from the invasion’s operation.
The invasion transpired long ago.
And now the time for mass destruction has come. The time for finishing off the city has
come, building by building and human by human.
The time has come for the genocide of this Native American tribe who dared to raise
its guns against the white colonizer.
And the silence has been complete.
The politicians inside and outside of Iraq, silent.
The writers and artists of Iraq, silent.
Journalists, silent.
God is silent, too.
Not a single voice is raised for the sake of the plundered Revolution City.
[1] Revolution City (madinat al-thawra) is a suburb of Baghdad built in 1959. Since then, it has been re-named Saddam City (madinat Saddam) and then re-named al-Sadr City (madinat al-Sadr). It corresponds to the Sadr City that most people read about in newspapers today. Even though it has been re-named, many Iraqis still refer to it as Revolution City (madinat al-thawra).
Nahrain Al-Mousawi 