Aleppo, Aleppo, Aleppo! Poem by Elizabeth Padillo Olesen

You are bombed night and day
The sky burns before your eyes
Your children and your stories
are fallen, buried in mounting rubbles.

Your precious children have lost their tears;
they scream but without a sound;
Their fears lie deep in their bursting chests
Only wanting to reach out their parents
to reassure them of the good and hopeful times.

But fathers and mothers, uncles, aunties
neighbors, brothers and sisters are gone
or lost by every drop of bomb from the sky;
this bloody war buries alive the children
by hunger and by the fall of their own homes.

Let us hope your children will be able to cry again
Let us hope these precious ones will be able to say
their words about how this war
has caused their innocent lives.
Let us see how the beasts on the air
who drop bombs day and night
will be able to remember these children
buried alive in the grave of oblivion in Aleppo.
______________________
November 18,2016