Wednesday, October 16, 2013

A Human Rights Poem for Blog Action Day 2013


Seeing What Cannot Be Seen
(A Human Rights Poem for Blog Action Day 2013)

Squadrons of government
soldiers in riot gear,
massed and ready
behind the white man
confronting the forest man,
looking
for any reason
to begin firing,

nation of mothers, fathers,
children, grandfathers,
grandmothers, The People,
behind the forest man,
their bodies,
their voices,
their stories all
outside the shot,

the forest under fire,
fields of burning stumps,
dead bodies, murdered chiefs
laying in their graves,
violated treaties,
stinking mines,
cattle ranches worked
by Indian slaves,
missing children,
dying animals,
all these are
what cannot be seen

in the photograph,
nor the citizen journalist
aiming the camera,
nor the face
of the blog writer
who published the picture,
or that of the Global Voices
online editor who reported
the report
of  the last
on the rain forest Indians
taking to the streets
to save their land,
to save their lives, nor

the face
of the forest man
willing
to die rather than step aside
for the bulldozers
because without the forest
he will die anyway,

we cannot see ourselves
in the picture

until now.

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