Cry Darfur

 

 

Oilmen on safari, hitmen – bullet-

vested, the slow dignity of the starved

women in headscarves cradling the dying

 

could be us

 

those meatless fingers cupped around

porous child-sized NGO aid bowls

filled with a million displaced faces

 

could be ours

 

Once green and growing plump villages –

now trashed, gutted, and seared memories

adding to the encroaching barrens

 

could be home

 

the region’s name sounds like a cry

as it silently evaporates –

the worldgaze locked elsewhere

 

going gone

them you me

                    

                         -----------Katerina Fretwell

 

 

Katerina Fretwell's fifth poetry collection, Samsara: Canadian in
Asia, which also includes her art and a cd of her poems with music, will be
published by Pendas Productions in late 2006. A naturalized Canadian,
Fretwell is also a student of voice and piano and sings tenor in a choir.

 

 

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content © - Katerina Fretwell
music © - Sabri Khan
image source -  US Department of State website