This War Shall Not Leave Us

by Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee

From Aleppo to Afghanistan

This war shall not leave us,
It will chase us from city to city, 
From country to country,
It will chase us till we’re exhausted, 
Till we are ready to die,
This war will follow us, like the un-faithful 
Out to destroy god, it will follow us 
Like a faithful hound, sniff out
Children’s blood, tear out the song  
In their throat, erase the words  
They spelled wrong; all wars  
Love children, all wars are a revenge 
Against childhood, this war will stalk our  
Shadows, it will give us time
To gather our wounds, 
Stitch our sorrows, and when we are 
Almost sane, once again  
Prey to crumbs of 
A new hope, war, old friend,     
Will come for us and turn 
The future of our memory 
Into a tweet

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Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee is a poet, writer, and political science scholar. He is the author of The Town Slowly Empties: On Life and Culture during Lockdown (Headpress, Copper Coin, 2021). His poems have appeared in World Literature Today, Rattle, The London Magazine, New Welsh Review, Mudlark, Acumen, Hobart, Glass: A Review of Poetry, and other publications. His first collection of poetry, Ghalib's Tomb and Other Poems (2013), was published by London Magazine Editions. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, Guernica, Los Angeles Review of Books, 3AM Magazine, etc.

About this poem, he writes, “This poem does not have a date. It is written across time. Time that is more broken than continuous. Like our experience of the little wars that are happening across the globe. I call them little wars as they are limited to regions. But wars are wars, and lives are lives. You can measure destruction, you can number death, but you can’t measure, or number, grief. War is a macabre game adults play with children, because war is blind to hope. No poem of war will stop war. It can only connect the world’s grief.”