Canada, Are You Listening?

I have read a heart-breaking development in Ottawa, Canada which has prompted this heart-rending post + poem from my Koko, Sherry Blue Sky. You might want to read it so that you can understand my consternation too.

I want to give it a voice too.

This is in response to Kim’s prompt this week on #Passion. You might want to visit and read other worthy poems on this prompt at Poets United.

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Canada, what spell are you under

So odious, so ignominious as not to make you quake?

What detachment has visited you

As not to heed the plaintive breasts of a people disenfranchised?

What brass neck, what chutzpah impels you

To drown the din of reason floating in the air?

Canada, show me the trick

You use to wax your ears from Nishiyuu

Teach me how you do it, Canada

I mean, is that how you give audience

To Theresa Spence, the Attawapiskat Chief?

Is your memory so short, Canada

As not to realize that a march led people to freedom

And that not even the blizzard and the wind

Deterred them?

Have you forgotten the vanguards who braved

The water-horses?

Can you really STOP

What appears to be the Grand March

To seek audience in the great Temple of Truth?

Thus, let it be then

That what is imprinted in people’s hearts is laid bare

In Parliament Hill

Let then the shame, the disparagement reek to high heavens

Let the furrowed faces of the marching people

Let the broken beads of sweat drip

To add salt to the tawdry conscience of a Nation unkind

For if Canada truly can’t hear the din of the gathered mass

At Parliament Hill

Then it should bear the vacuity it has set her people in.