When everything is wrong no words seem right.
Silence is the only appropriate place for dignity’s sake
And it’s best to let things be
Sympathy is not opinion
While angry men and women fight over what to do
And everyone is different
Some must have been cold for a long time
To feel nothing
Far away in some tribal cell where all is well
Where they gathered their views and grew to hate
For the sake of some other time
Festering with fear and ignorance
The cold teaching that sits inside us
With no glass of history
In the hands of informers
Could we be dumb and disgusting creatures
While sons and fathers lay dead
Mothers held their dead children to their screaming hearts
Suddenly this was happening in our place
And there are NO WORDS for this
While every day humans make war
Somewhere far away
We all tried to state our case
And hide the record
from years of this vile snake
Divorced from the overwhelmed
It’s easy to be a fool
Blaming each other
While wells of sorrow run deeper
Than anything that happened
Gone forever
Gone
A nation stops for a while
before it moves on
In a land deeply carved with deep fissures
Bone and rock
Shell and core
Weathered faces pin their labels on people they never knew
While some contemplate their own incomplete state
How we came to be so sure
When wisdom sits in silence
A place alone together
Like you and me barely knowing each other
Daring to change the darkness
Where the poet refuses to participate
Don’t dream it’s over
Can we put aside these childish things
And grow up and get along
Like the world we hoped for
When we were children
Before the fear
Before every word seemed wrong
Gerard Otto is an activist and a writer.
Powerful
Thankyou Otto
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