Poetry: Declassified

This fall, University of Iowa Press will publish Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak. The collection is comprised entirely of declassified poems written by detainees held at the base. A number of poems were rejected for declassification because, according the Pentagon, the poetry “presents a special risk” due to its “content and format.” Below is one poem that made it past Pentagon censors:

Death Poem

By Jumah al-Dossari

Take my blood.
Take my death shroud and
The remnants of my body.
Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely.

Send them to the world,
To the judges and
To the people of conscience,
Send them to the principled men and the fair-minded.

And let them bear the guilty burden, before the world,
Of this innocent soul.
Let them bear the burden, before their children and before history,
Of this wasted, sinless soul,
Of this soul which has suffered at the hands of the “protectors of peace.”


More here.