For Refaat Alareer, Palestinian Poet

See the splendor of pained poetic souls. True poets are with art and nature crowned. Reach Refaat a poet’s crown. Mark him as chronicler of this scene of horror, The author of resistance, pride, and honor. After he died, they honored his wish to fill the sky of Gaza With colorful kites, speaking shiningly to the whirling Israeli drones, like the buzzing of so many flies. Hands clapping, tears falling, hopes reborn, with unbending wills and hearts of fire, and love. Refaat wrote, ‘sometimes a homeland becomes a tale,’ a heroic tale, and their savant poets too. After he died, they honored him with white flags on the rubble that remains of his abode, telling the children, the warriors of tomorrow, a tale, of courage under fire, and the myth of Palestine, the heartbeat of their identity, under the golden dome of Mediterranean Sun saluting the eyes, eyes that see through the treacheries, the barb wires, the march of history Toward a luminous point, all unaccountably, into the clasp of a fresh new born idea, nearer to binding faith, than wild dismembering injustice, Gaza free from all deceits, uncaged, open to all possibilities, where people mingle at seaside cafes without fear of being bombed, kids study at school without fear of air strikes, where doctors attend to patents without fearing a cold-blooded massacre, where every day they put fresh flowers on Refaat’s grave, with the love notes that read, rest easy friend, Palestine is now free.