Is it Iraq?
Blessed is the one who said
I know the road, which leads to it;
Blessed is the one whose lips uttered
The four letters:
“ Iraq, Iraq, nothing but Iraq."
Distant missiles will applaud;
Soldiers armed to the teeth will storm us;
Minarets and houses will crumble;
Palm trees will collapse under the bombing;
The shores will be crowded
With floating corpses.
We will seldom see Al-Tahrir Square
In books of elegies and photographs;
Restaurants and hotels will be our roadmaps
And our home in the paradise of shelter:
MacDonald’s
KFC
Holiday Inn;
And we will be drowned
Like your name , O Iraq,
*“ Iraq, Iraq, nothing but Iraq "
London, March 15, 2003
* The line is from the well-known poem, Unshudat Al-Matar
(Rainsong), by the pioneering Iraqi poet Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab
(1926-1964)