A full day of silence… for the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the hands of U.S.-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 malnourishment or starvation as a result of a 12-year U.S. embargo against the country. Before I begin this poem, two months of silence… for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa, where “homeland security” made them aliens in their own country. Nine months of silence… for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where death rained down and peeled back every layer of concrete, steel, earth and skin, and the survivors went on as if alive. A year of silence… for the millions of dead in Viet Nam—a people, not a war—for those who know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their relatives bones buried in it, their babies born of it. Two months of silence… for the decades of dead in Colombia, whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have piled up and slipped off our tondues. Before I begin this poem, Seven days of silence… for El Salvador A day of silence… for Nicaragua Five days of silence… for the Guatemaltecos None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years. 45 seconds of silence… for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas… 1,933 miles of silence… for every desperate body That burns in the desert sun Drowned in swollen rivers at the pearly gates to the Empire’s underbelly, A gaping wound sutured shut by razor wire and corrugated steel. 25 years of silence… for the millions of Africans who found their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could poke into the sky. For those who were strung and swung from the heights of sycamore trees In the south… the north… the east… the west… There will be no dna testing or dental records to identify their remains. …Because this is not a 9-1-1 poem This is a 9/10 poem, It is a 9/9 poem, A 9/8 poem, A 9/7 poem… This is a 1492 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 1973 poem for Chile. This is a September 12th 1977 poem for Steven Biko in South Africa. This is a September 13th 1971 poem for the brothers at Attica Prison, New York. This is a September 14th 1992 poem for the people of Somalia. This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground amidst the ashes of amnesia. Via Faris Giacaman Taraki
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 16:37:21 +0000
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