Coal and Ash and Tears and Clouds
©June 23rd, 2019
By Vijaya Sundaram
Thoughts in the brain
Become coal
Words in the throat
Become fire
Blood in arteries
Becomes ash
While everything burns.
Everything burns within,
Everything burns without.
Coolness is a dream.
The trees sing a cool song,
Desperate, calm, stoic – all three –
Sending up moisture to form clouds,
As we, hot and burning,
Suck all moisture from the air.
Those inside the Camps –
Detained, separated, abused, ill-fed –
Cannot see clouds,
Their eyes
Turn inwards, seeing a reality
With clouds, rain, hope …
Occluded.
Where are the words for the lost?
Where are the words for those
Without water, without soap, without warmth,
Without parents, without country,
Without human kindness,
Without hope, without joy?
In a world where water and soap
Are treasures beyond imagining,
Who are the champions
Who would storm those prisons,
Bring succor, wash, clothe,
Soothe them, and speak of love?
The Detained – a word masking horrors
Suppurating from open wounds
In the skin of our world, which lies raw, flailed.
The children, whom we shunt into dark spaces,
So we can be deaf to their cry, blind to their pain,
Must see with eyes which would make us quail
If we gaze into them, so we turn away.
For there must be accusation, and bewilderment,
And an emotion for which no words exist.
All around us, men and women
So comfortable and pleasure-satiated,
Mutter words of sorrow and unease,
Or condemnation and contumely,
Then go about their happy days,
While somewhere, far from our fearful eyes,
In this vaunted land of freedom and equality,
Brutality and hatefulness march
Without pity, without human-kindness.
Cry a river, I say. Cry down an ocean.
Cry, breathe, send up clouds
And let it rain down
Some measure of comfort
That those awaiting it,
May find it again under a free sky,
Under gentle trees,
Where song-birds sing in their nests,
Of home.
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