PHA-Exchange> Food for a thought without a rhyme

[Claudio]

Human Rights Reader 

 

Before I start this poem *
                                      Emmanuel Ortiz (USA)

 

Before I start this poem,

I'd like to ask you to join me in

A moment of silence

In honor of those who died

In the World Trade Center.

 

I would also like to ask you

A moment of silence

For all those who have been

Harassed, imprisoned, disappeared,

Tortured, raped or killed

In relation to those strikes.

 

And if I could just add one more thing.

A full day of silence

For the tens of thousands of Palestinians

Who have died at the hands of

US-backed Israeli forces

Over decades of occupation.

 

Six months of silence 

For the million-and-a half Iraqi people,

Mostly children, who have died of

Malnutrition or starvation

As a result of the 11-year US embargo

Against the country.

Before I begin this poem:

 

Two months of silence

For the Blacks under Apartheid

In South Africa.

Nine months of silence

For the dead in Hiroshima

And Nagasaki.

 

A year of silence

For the millions of dead

in Vietnam - a people, not a war.

 

A year of silence

For the dead in Cambodia,

Victims of a secret war.ssshhh.

Say nothing.we don't want them to

Learn that they are dead.

 

Two months of silence

For the decades of dead in Colombia.

 

Before I begin this poem,

An hour of silence

For El Salvador.

For Nicaragua.

Two days of silence

For the Guatemaltecos.

None of whom ever knew 

a moment of peace

45 seconds of silence

for the dead in Chiapas

25 years of silence

for the hundred million Africans

who found their graves far deeper in the ocean

and for those who were

strung and swung

from the heights of sycamore trees.

 

100 years of silence.

For the hundreds of millions of

Indigenous peoples

>From here in the US.

So you want a moment of silence?

 

And we are all left speechless

Our tongues snatched from out mouths

Our eyes stapled shut

A moment of silence

And the poets have all been laid to rest

The drums disintegrating into dust

Before I begin this poem,

You want a moment of silence

You mourn now as if the world 

will never be the same

And the rest of us hope to hell! It won't be.

Not like it always has been.

 

Because this is not a 9-1-1 poem

This is a 9/10 poem;

A 9/9 poem,

A 9/8 poem,

A 9/7 poem.

This is a poem about

What causes poems like this

To be written.

 

And if this is a 9/11 poem, then

This is a September 11th poem

For Chile, 1971

This is a September 12th poem

For Steven Biko in South Africa, 1977

 

This is a September 13th poem 

for the brothers in Attica prison, 

New York, 1971

This is a September 14th poem

For Somalia, 1992..

 

This is a poem 

For every date that falls

To the ground in ashes

This is a poem for the 110 stories

That were never told

The 110 stories that history

Chose no to write in the textbooks

The 110 stories that CNN, BBC,

The New York Times

And Newsweek ignored

 

This is a poem

For interrupting this program.

And still you want

A moment of silence

For your dead?

We could give you

lifetimes of empty:

 

The unmarked graves

The lost languages

The uprooted trees and histories

The dead stares on the faces

Of nameless children

Before I start this poem

We could be silent forever

Or just long enough to hunger,

For the dust t bury us

And you would still ask us

For more of our silence.

 

If you want a moment of silence

Then stop the oil pumps

Turn off the engines and the televisions

Sink the cruise ships

Crash the stock markets

Delete the instant messages.

 

If you want a moment of silence,

Put a brick through

The window of 'Taco Bell',

And pay the workers for wages lost

Tear down the liquor stores,

The jailhouses, the White Houses,

The Penthouses and the Playboys.

 

If you want a moment of silence,

Then take it

the next time your white guilt

fills the room where my beautiful

people have gathered.

 

You want a moment of silence

Then take it

Now,

Before this poem begins.

 

Here, in the echo of my voice,

In the space

Between bodies in embrace,

 

Here is your silence.

Take it.

But take it all.

Let your silence begin

At the beginning of crime.

But we,

Tonight we will keep right on singing

Four our dead.

_________________________________

*: Selected verses from this poem published in Third World Resurgence, No.161/162, Jan/Feb 2004,m pp.70-72

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