We published part of the this poem in a post about the student BDS movement. It certainly deserves to be posted again in a different context.
From Verse, a poem written by Nizar Qabbani in the wake of the 1967 war:
19
We do not want an angry generation
To plough the sky
To blow up history
To blow up our thoughts.
We want a new generation
That does not forgive mistakes
That does not bend.
We want a generation of giants.20
Arab children,
Corn ears of the future,
You will break our chains,
Kill the opium in our heads,
Kill the illusions.
Arab children,
Don’t read about our suffocated generation,
We are a hopeless case.
We are as worthless as a water-melon rind.
Dont read about us,
Dont ape us,
Dont accept us,
Dont accept our ideas,
We are a nation of crooks and jugglers.
Arab children,
Spring rain,
Corn ears of the future,
You are the generation
That will overcome defeat.
Tariq Ali referenced Qabbani’s poem on the Guardian website and added, “How happy he would have been to seen his prophecy being fulfilled.”
