O Little Girl by Marwan Siaf I grieve for you, O little girl She who lays in the cold hospital bed Her body: mangled and disfigured She misses her arm Yet, not a tear sheds From her tortured eyes Eyes that wish to be blind Ears that wish to be deaf Her people’s blood rains down on her Day after day Yet in her heart, A stubborn drought persists The little girl longs to grieve all she has lost All that can never be returned Yet, grief is a luxury That has cruelly been stolen from her. So I grieve for you! They know not of whom The moons and the stars Bow down to They: The gleeful inheritors of a legacy Of genocide and global rampage; The old Western empires How foolish we are To have ever believed they waned These empires Dispatch settler After settler To take what’s yours, O little girl. They grow crazed with lust For atrocity and blood They foam at the mouth And lick their lips As Gaza is raised, As children are slain, As the Arab drops dead. But they know not! They know not of their fate Their false truth will cease And your divine truth will persist Forevermore. So I ask you, O little girl, I beg you! --How selfish I am!-- To never lose hope The world closes in And the olive trees burn You mustn't lose hope! For Haifa And her docks Will soon be filled With the joyous song of sailors They will sing of their country, Reclaimed For Jaffa And her streets Will soon be filled With the sweet scent of Citrus Once again For Jerusalem, O holy city! Its temples Its churches And its mosques, Hate the oppressor These houses of God, And He who they call out to Seethe at the occupying settler And the seethe of He is a terrible thing That has already killed them: They who forget to die Their souls Their humanity Ruined by sin I grieve for you, O little girl, All that you’ve lost All that can never be returned The legacy of They Is heinous But the legacy of your people Of the Palestinians Is good and true So I ask you, O little girl! --How selfish I am!-- To never lose hope O little girl, Where have you gone? Why don’t you answer? I beg and beg For her to listen As I have not finished! But she is dead. I failed to notice In my desperate theater, That this tiny, tired body --Hacked, ripped apart By Their bombs-- Has refused to suffer Any longer For she is just a little girl And I am selfish And cowardly I fool with my cries and Calls for hope But hope is nothing Without the necessity of action We must become a flood Of rage and despair! Call the storm of locusts! Levy the fist of God! Have they forgotten? How the twilight of the sea Have swallowed them whole? We shall pull the clouds out of the sky And fly on their backs to freedom Pharaoh and his chariots Thought themselves true Yet powerless were they When the sea came to pursue Copyright 2023 by Marwan Siaf
Marwan Siaf is a High School student from Ashburn, Virginia. He is a passionate writer and adorer of poetry and lyricism, taking inspiration from his Moroccan and Arab heritage, of which poetry takes an integral part. His writing style pulls inspiration from the greats: the poet Nizar Qabbani, the verse of lyricist Mohamed Abdel Wahab, and the masterpiece of Arabic literature, the Quran. Marwan plans to study Arabic language and literature after high school. He can be found at @marwansiaf on Instagram.
