Stop your fear. Rejoice!
Express your longings, show your hate,
Let yourselves believe it is true
that twenty years of life without sun
and dreams without hope
and mouths without bread
and desire without action
and words without truth
and curiosity without education
and dawns without exhilaration
and dusks without fulfillment
and friends without trust
and families without leadership
and spirits without love
and life without security
and existence without survival
have finally ended.
The world begins anew.
For those of you whose days are short, Rejoice!
For you have lived long enough to see them
tear down Saddam’s statues,
and rip apart his pictures,
and put a noose around the statue’s head
and drag it through the streets
and knock a hole in its forehead
and spit on it and kick it
and throw garbage at it.
Remember! Once you believed such freedom
would never live again in Baghdad.
Celebrate! Think not of the future.
For now there is only triumph to consider.
What will happen in a month?
Who will take over and what will it become?
Don’t think about these things, for now.
Celebrate the victory,
which God ordained in his own way
for your sake, for the sake
of your suffering. You are released
You are redeemed! Rejoice!
What are the conqueror’s motives?
Whatever they are, you will never be treated
this way again. Let the pundits wail,
let the newsmen analyze
let the profundos articulate,
second guess, hypothesize,
criticize and suspect.
Don’t listen to them! You are free
from the monster Saddam.
The sign in your hand says:
“Forever, Please! No More Terror!”
They have no idea
what you have been through.
You are delivered from evil. Rejoice!!!
©Copyright April 9, 2003 by Peter Gorham