Yemen's Children Poem by Chris Zachariou

Our life:
four ruined walls without a roof
bombed schools, burned hospitals,

screams and panic in the streets
and there's no laughter in the little
children's garden anymore.

Habibata,

I count our years together— six.
Ahmed cries for mama,
Nazira will be five for ever.

Jamal shoots at planes with
a wooden gun and each day
his lust for blood grows stronger.

Carnage, charred bodies,
the stench of rotting flesh
and the fighters keep coming:

important men in foreign lands
weighed up the cost in coin—
one job, a thousand lives.