The Child by Victor Hugo

The Turks have been. Destruction everywhere.
Chios, the isle of vines, lies black and bare-
Chios, in the leaves' shade.
Whose seas used to reflect its wooded height,
The girls who dances and played.

Deserted. No: beside the blackened stone
A blue-eyed child, a Greek child, sits alone,
And bows his downcast head.
His only stronghold and security
Is a white hawthorn-a bloom equally
Ignored among the dead.

Poor boy, barefooted on such crags and tors!
To wipe the tears from those clear eyes of yours
Hued like the sea and sky,
So that their blue, stormy with weeping, may
Be lit with lighting-shafts of joy and play,
To lift your fair head high,

What do you want? What must we give you, child,
To tie and tidy pleasantly those wild
Ringlets of hair that billow
About you, never shamed by steel --- that shed
Themselves in tears over your lovely head
Like the leaves on a willow?

What could relieve you, lad, from all your woes?
The lily, blue as your blue eyes, that grows
By dark pools in Iran?
Or the fruit of the Tuba, that huge tree
Whose shade a horse, galloping constantly,
Takes centuries to span?

Or might a lovely woodbird make you smile ---
Singing like neys, but in sweeter style,
Or like cymbals but louder?
Flower, fruit or wondrous bird---which is for you?
"My friend", says the Greek boy with eyes of blue,
"I want bullets and powder!"

#IStandWithGreece #GreeceUnderAttack