This poem speaks to the weight of watching – the ache of witnessing suffering from a distance, unable to do more than bear witness. In “Despicable Us”, Sarah Shahzad traces the arc of a city under siege: the ash-covered faces, the indifferent authorities, the bombs falling on ordinary people with jobs, families and futures. The poem turns on its most devastating line – a self-indictment of a watching world reduced to prayer.

Despicable Us

by Sarah Shahzad

Flakes of ashes brushed off,
From a face that aches of dust caught,
The departed days go unnoticed from the keyhole it peeks,
The "authority" goes by to sleep, if only it could speak,

Petrified by them, they say,
The ones who doze off through these, hurled with dismay,
Pillars in construction dropped off for hostile strikes to take place,
Harsh bombs, an arm extended in support from the gaze,

But to whom? the offenders who blitzes raids with no sign of ceasing,
To quickly exterminate the problem known as "citizens",
Citizens, the people flourishing in the land, with jobs, future and family,
They have hopes and dreams too, a bright tomorrow that they could relish,

All they wished for was to stay, not to partake in this misery play,
The lost and afraid, the scene unwraps to a brutal display,
I hope the gaze moves onto the ones in fray,
Despicable us, all we can do is pray.