A collection of poems written about cities under attack, about loss, hope and resilience.Women pay their respects following a vigil in central Manchester. Credit: Reuters/Peter NichollsTony Walsh on ManchesterOn May 22, a terrorist set off a bomb at Ariana Grande’s concert in Manchester, England. The attack left 22 dead, including an eight-year-old girl. Poet Tony Walsh responded with a tribute to the city – on everything that made it special and would keep it going.§Pablo Neruda on StalingradChilean poet Pablo Neruda wrote an ode to the city after the Soviet Union defeated Nazi Germany’s attempt to capture Stalingrad, now in southern Russia, in February 1943. More than a million died in the battle or went missing during the time that many see as the biggest and most brutal conflict during the Second World War.Translated excerpt:And you, Russia, you stern warriorNot experienced the same whether you are now:And loneliness and cold lying,Rancor vows … Plagued your chestZillion bullets, tens of thousands of cores.Already scorpion crawled fascistFor your walls, great StalingradIn an effort to sting you! .. Where are they,Your allies in a giant battle?New York dancing .. and London immersedIn a treacherous thought … Oh shame! –I shouted to them. – My heart can not,Can not our heart, no, it canIn the world to live, that looks so calmOn the death of his best sons!Can it be you leave them in the fight?Think again! Perish yourself!We are waiting for! .. What you say something?Or have you, that on the eastern frontMountain rose corpses fillingAll of your sky? But then a legacyWill get you the hell! .. Or you want toDrive to the grave life? .. Erase the smileWith faces stinking mud, bloodCruel torment? We say, “Enough!We are tired of your petty affairs,We are tired of your meetings autumn,Where ever preside umbrellaThough sleeping in the coffin sinister Chamberlain! ”Second Front is not! .. But StalingradYou can stand at least a day and nightYou tortured with fire and iron!Yes! Death itself is powerless in front of you!They are immortal, your sons …§Premendra Mitra on Calcutta in the Bengal famineIn 1943 Bengal, nearly four million people died of a famine created by the British colonial government’s policies of making farmers move from food crop to cash crops, and diverting food imports to British troops fighting in the Second World War in a world where trade had dropped substantially. Premendra Mitra poem Phyan (meaning rice gruel) brings out the image of men, women and children on the streets of Calcutta crying out for phyan during the famine.On the city streetsRoam strange creatures,Human-like, yet, not quite human,Cruel caricatures of humanity!Yet they move and speak,Like debris they pile up by the road,Sit, foraging food, on piles of garbageWearyAnd cry out for phyan.§Sankichi Toge on HiroshimaOn August 6, 1945, at the height of the Second World War, the US dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion killed 80,000 people immediately, and tens of thousand died painful deaths in the years that followed from being exposed to the radiation. In this poem, translated by Karen Thornber, Sankichi Toge writes about memories that will never fade. An excerpt:can we forget that flash?suddenly 30,000 in the streets disappearedin the crushed depths of darknessthe shrieks of 50,000 died outwhen the swirling yellow smoke thinnedbuildings split, bridges collapsedpacked trains rested singedand a shoreless accumulation of rubble and embers – Hiroshimabefore long, a line of naked bodies walking in groups, cryingwith skin hanging down like ragshands on chestsstamping on crumbled brain matterburnt clothing covering hipscorpses lie on the parade ground like stone images of Jizo, dispersed in all directionson the banks of the river, lying one on top of another, a group that had crawled to a tethered raft§Sinan Antoon on BaghdadIn his work, Sinan Antoon looks at an Iraq caught between wars, at cities that build themselves up only to be torn down again. An excerpt from Wrinkles: on the wind’s forehead –3the wind was tiredfrom carrying the coffinsand leanedagainst a palm treeA satellite inquired:Where to now?the silencein the wind’s cane murmured:“Baghdad”and the palm tree caught fire…6My heart is a storkperched on a distant domein Baghdadit’s nest made of bonesits skyof death7This is not the first timemyths wash their facewith our blood(t)here they arelooking in horizon’s mirroras they don our bones…11The grave is a mirrorinto which the child looksand dreams:when will I grow upand be like my father. . .dead§Zeb and Haniya on LahoreOn Easter Sunday in 2016, a bomber in Lahore killed 72 people outside a park, including many children. Musical duo Zeb and Haniya released a song, ‘Dadra’, as a reaction to the attack, talking about a city that is resilient “even in the darkest of times”. The song and the music video explore Lahore’s past, present and future.§Mahmoud Darwish on JerusalemAs a city, Jerusalem knows conflict more than most. Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, who wrote extensively on Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians,talks in his poem In Jerusalem about the conflicting narratives, both historical and religious, that shaped the city’s past and present. An excerpt, translated by Fady Joudah:In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,I walk from one epoch to another without a memoryto guide me. The prophets over there are sharingthe history of the holy … ascending to heavenand returning less discouraged and melancholy, because loveand peace are holy and are coming to town.I was walking down a slope and thinking to myself: Howdo the narrators disagree over what light said about a stone?Is it from a dimly lit stone that wars flare up?I walk in my sleep. I stare in my sleep. I seeno one behind me. I see no one ahead of me.All this light is for me. I walk. I become lighter. I flythen I become another. Transfigured. Wordssprout like grass from Isaiah’s messengermouth: “If you don’t believe you won’t be safe.”§Postscript: Although the Nazi bombing of the Basque city of Guernica in Spain in April 1937 during the Spanish Civil War led to a lot of poetry, the city’s destruction was most iconically memorialised not in words but on canvas, by Pablo Picasso.Pablo Picasso, Guernica. Credit: pablopicasso.orgThe painting, which Picasso finished in June 1937, now hangs in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid.