Friday 29 March 2013

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.

~


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.

1 comments:

Sherry Blue Sky said...

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Salem, I applaud you for this poem. I want to blast it from the rooftops!!!!! HA! Smug governmental Personages can be laid bare in their disinterest (at best), contempt (at worst). I had a busy day and only found this now. Thank you for reading and responding. I'll e you, Salem but truly you would not believe (well, I guess yes you would) the Third World conditions so many of our First Nations people live in. Hasnt changed in decades.

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