SREBRENICA

 

 

Poem: Srebrenica

An old mother
Clasped onto the memory
the cornice in the ground
The unmarked grave
As tears roll down her cheeks
As pain holds her clenched
In her breath
Points out
There is my husband
In that grave
In there, my sons
My daughters
Raped and disappeared
They only
In my heart
Not long ago
The terrible tragedy
Struck us and its genocide
The day I grew old

The world
watched in silence
They whispered
As the guns and bullets
Rattled its peace
They talked and talked
But only action
The death kept coming
In this Srebrenica town
As the war raged
It’s verdict and life ravaged
They watched
In silence

Look at these graves
Srebrenica in silence
As you travel
In your pursuit
For evidence and analysis
The biggest grave
The grand epitaph
Upon these institutions
The beacons of light
Their silence hard to break
I grieve for them too
The institutions of the world
Condemned to their graves
I cry for them too…

Asim Khan

Thanks Aisha Ghazi for bringing out an old painful reminder to what happened not long ago and the total collapse of that responsibility and its burden shown by the world and its institutions and when they realized it was simply too late.