July 1974 - a poem by Chris Zachariou

Cyprus 1974

I.

A day in July—

fires, bombs, a storm of death.

The drums of war
—monotonous, incessant—
pierce the eery silence of TVs
and panic-stricken phones.

Martial music plays non-stop
and a newsman with a gun
heralds the dawn of a new day.

In the brutal summer heat

machine-gun fire rages on.

Corpses are rotting in the streets,
mothers keen their dead sons

and brothers kill their brothers.

II.

Silence for a few days

then the drums begin once more.
This time terror has a foreign face.

Speechless radios, TVs, and phones

cower in hushed and quiet corners.
Tanks rumble in the streets and death

hovers in the pungent air.

Grey Wolves bark and snarl

knocking on doors at three a.m.
Boys and men are dragged out of bed,

young girls are brutalized and abused

without mercy.

The screams behind the prison doors
go on for endless days and nights.
Each morning mothers gather at the gates—
few relieved to hear their sons still scream
more, grief-stricken to listen to their silence.

A day in July—

fires, bombs, a storm of death.