On the bliss of our collective ignorance

 

Let the Fur,

Zaghawa,

Massaleit,

mean nothing at all to us.

 

Let Darfur remain a reference,

vague, to be sometimes heard

as filler, when what’s cooling

on the back-end

burner is calmly

condescended to,

allowed a scant

half-minute of mention.

 

Let a late-night

documentary

on the pulse of genocide

give its nod to west Sudan,

to the region

that was touched upon

earlier in this poem.

 

Now flip the jarring channel

just as quickly as you can,

as if it’s a commercial’s

annoyance,

an interruption,

a splash in the sleeping face

of our complacent, crass TV.

 

Let the villages be burned

and watch its women, raped by gangs;

let the Janjaweed

wield machetes

and the children lose their limbs –

we only save for oil.

 

Let the camps swell up

like a wave, crash

from overcrowding,

stomachs cave and bulge

and the sickness be unnamed:

 

it’s difficult

to remember

each one,

easier, by far, to say

 

we did not know about it,

we did not know about it,

das haben wir nicht gewußt.

 

----- Andreas Gripp

 

Andreas Gripp lives in London, Ontario and is the author of seven books of poetry, several chapbooks and was the editor and publisher of Afterthoughts from 1994 to 2000.