The great Russian poet, writer and journalist, Alexander Prokhanov, composed a poem in the Russian language that embodies the suffering of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, and it was published in the Russian media.
In an interview with the Komsomolskaya Pravda website, Prokhanov spoke about his trips to the Gaza Strip, where he said: “I was in this small slice of the globe, which Israel surrounds with a giant concrete wall, along which there is a strip of barbed wire, and with towers.” They carry machine guns and night vision devices, and when any living, moving body falls into the spectrum of the rays of these devices, it does not have to be a human, but rather a cow or a large bird… the machine guns open fire and destroy this life.”
Prokhanov continued: “In Gaza, I had the opportunity to participate in planting an olive grove, and I planted the shy and small seedlings in the red land of Gaza. I planted one of those seedlings, and drank from this water. And now I and this tree are like father and son. That is why I feel today that Gaza, “The one that is exposed to a lot of shells and bombs is my flesh.”
Prokhanov described the people of Gaza as friends, saying: “These are the doctors who studied with us, they speak Russian, and their Russian wives, who have children, speak Arabic and Russian. This terrible pain I am experiencing, the unbearable torment, and the oppression because I am unable to help, and I cannot help them.” “I can reach them, but I cannot protect them from all this death. This is what prompted me to write the poem about Gaza.”
The story was translated from Russian by the Palestinian poet Abdullah Issa:
Gaza!
O planet writhing with tongues of fire
Where will I escape from the curse of horror?
Here is the hand of a child martyr extended to me
To escape death under destruction.
This is a burnt ruby
And in my bloody wound
They turned our old house into my grave
And with a six-pointed axe
They cut down my tree and trampled my flowers.
From the heart of the hot wound in the splintered body
Crimson blood oozes
And in Gaza, these black tunnels
It leads to the cover of heaven
When the fire ignited the tail of the missile
Thunder flashed trembling in space
The earth lifted me higher
To burn an Israeli Merkava tank
With bated breath he kept whispering
“I am the son of this free, free people
free.
She is my immortal soul, immortal
My heavenly freedom
My freedom is that I am free and free
And near the cannon, hot blood was pouring out
My wounds torture my soul
And my shield is the Qur’an
Bullets piercing my chest.
My beloved and blessed country
Even among the broken houses and stairs
And on top of piles of charred armor
The divine crescent shines
My bloody homeland
My mother was killed by a shell, a martyr
I bandage my wound
I prepare my weapons for a new war.
Alexander Prokhanov is a Russian/Soviet poet, writer, and journalist, born in 1938. He received the “Alexander Nevsky” State Medal for the year 2023 for his community activities, the “Red Banner” Medal for work in 1986, and the Peoples’ Friendship Medal for the year 1988 for services to the development of Soviet literature. The Medal of Honor in 1981, and the Komsomol Lenin Prize in 1982 for the novel “A Tree in the Center of Kabul.”
He is a member of the Secretariat of the Russian Writers’ Union, and editor-in-chief of the newspaper “Zavtra” (Tomorrow). He criticizes liberalism and capitalism and is the originator of the idea of the “Fifth Empire” as another Russian empire, a successor to both the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire.
