Three Poems for Gaza
Echoes Across the Sea
I wake in a world of quiet halls and scholarly peace,
My heart anchored in the safety of collegiate greens,
Yet across the oceans, in the heart of Gaza,
Echoes of chaos break with the sound of sorrow.
As I trace lines in textbooks, others trace cracks in their walls,
Where the light peeks not with hope but the sharp glare of fear.
I wake to the comfort of Chai brewing peace in my cup,
While peace eludes the streets where bombs brew fear.
In my lectures, we debate theories and justice,
While the streets of Gaza host debates of survival,
Where the right answers are not graded, but gravely lived.
Every wrong turn is measured in breaths, not points.
My campus marches are a tapestry of banners and cries for peace,
Miles away from where each cry is muffled by blasts.
I shout against the silence of my government,
Which trades in arms that reach shores not meant to welcome them.
I craft poems in the quiet of my softly lit room,
Words steeped in the hopes of my diasporic heritage,
A prayer cast into the night sky, a wish upon a star fallen too soon,
For the children of Gaza, whose dreams are penned in the margins of war.
Their resilience, a lesson no classroom can teach,
Their sorrow, a lecture in the human cost of conflict.
Here, I sit with the privilege of peace, grappling with my conscience,
As the world turns, and Gaza once again is wrapped in the night’s cold embrace, praying to be free.
Whispers in the Rubble
In Gaza, the night is a blanket too thin to hold the cold,
And the stars are holes in a sky that has seen too much.
The city breathes in dust, rough and unyielding, and exhales despair,
Echoing the displaced stories of my South Asian forebears.
A child’s abandoned shoe, facing a mourning moon, speaks—
Of futures halted abruptly, akin to tales my grandparents once recounted.
A mother's shawl, draped over rubble, not shoulders,
Sways in the ghost of her embrace, longing for warmth.
Here, tears are the currency of the unheard,
Their salt writes the history of the silenced in the sand.
Each grain, a testament to dreams that the dawn
No longer promises to those who still dare to sleep.
A father stands where his home once laughed,
His heart beats a dirge for the walls that sheltered love.
Now open to the winds, he gathers memories like shards,
Hoping to piece together a life from fragments of the past.
In Gaza, I see the resilience of my ancestors’ land
Roots entwined deep in the soil,
Clutching the earth soaked with stories of the fallen—
A chorus of faith against loss,
A flame defiant in the enveloping darkness.
Yet, amidst devastation, the call for prayer rises
Reminding us that even shattered lives are still whole.
A Call to Conscience
From the quiet corners of my campus to the corridors of power,
My voice rises, a tempest forged from a distant land’s fire.
Bearing the weight of my South Asian heritage,
I stand before you, a testament of diaspora and despair.
How many bombs will fall on Gaza’s innocent
Before empathy turns the tide of your alliances?
How long will bombs dictate the future?
How long will silence endorse violence?
I study your treaties, your foreign policies inked in shadows,
The duality of promises made and the realities enacted.
From my grandmother’s tales of partition and loss,
I inherited a legacy of skepticism and scars.
Here, under the freedom of academic halls, I dissect
The rhetoric that veils the arms deals and diplomatic silence.
Yet, amid the debates and theoretical disputes,
Gaza bleeds a stark contrast to our sanitized discussions.
Your history of intervention, a pattern repeated,
From Vietnam to Iraq, now echoed in Gaza's ruins.
Do you not see the parallels, or do you choose blindness,
Ignoring the cries that pierce through academic journals?
Oh, leaders of the free, hear this South Asian student’s plea:
Redefine your might, not by the missiles you deploy,
But by the humanity you embody and the peace you promote.
For we are not just allies by geography or politics,
But by the shared dignity of life, in every land, in every creed.