Death at Noon
Today dawned
Like any other morning
At the other end of the world
My sister sits nursing a cup of coffee
Her fingers numb
From minus twenty
Mind numb with shock.
Here, I drive to work
Still swear under my breath
at the driver of the truck that cut into my lane
Nearly killing me,
Plan my day
Tick off the list of things to be done:
A listening test to be recorded
A lecture to prepare for
A report to write
A professor to be contacted
Before lunch.
But more than four of my colleagues
Are in black and white
And I realise that includes me.
We stand around the
Water filter
Discussing ‘heroism’.
And no one is in a mood to work today
Even those joyous about captured
Territory.
Maybe we are numb too
Though it’s warm
and all we have today
Is a cloudy sky
[Editors note: A comment left on a blog I read regularly regarding the murder of Lasantha Wickremetunge threw up an interesting (and timely) challenge to Sri Lankan poets. I pointed out this comment to Vivimarie, who responded with this poem.]
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Thank you, Vivimarie, for rendering our collective numbness into your elegant poem. Thank you, too, Malinda for yours. You have spoken for many of us.
I'm the person who suggested on Dinidu's blog that our own poets respond to this unfolding tragedy. It was more a plea than a challenge, because, as I wrote in my own blog within hours of Lasantha's murder:
"For once, I’m at a loss for words. When prose fails, we must turn to verse which is always more potent.
I remember Paster Martin Niemoeller.
I remember Niyi Osundare.
I remember Adrian Mitchell."
http://movingimages.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/lasa…
The inspiration for my plea to Lankan poets came from "Dance the Guns to Silence: 100 Poems Inspired by Ken Saro-Wiwa" — a collection of poems in tribute to Nigerian poet, author, environmentalist and minority rights activist (for his Ogoni people) who was executed by Nigeria's military on 10 November 1995. More about him is found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Saro-Wiwa,and about the poetry volume itself at: http://www.remembersarowiwa.com/poetry.htm
As Lasantha goes on his final journey on Jan 12, I'm still struggling to put my own tribute together. For now, Ken Saro-Wiwa's celebrated poem (from which the book's title is derived), comes to mind:
"Dance your anger and your joys,
Dance the military guns to silence,
Dance oppression and injustice to death,
Dance my people,
For we have seen tomorrow
And there is an Ogoni star in the sky."