Photo courtesy of BBC
We will not be distracted. The emotion rushes
through us like a river enraged, if a river,
or a fault line, the heating jet stream, if these
can be given human volition, made intelligible
to the parliament-appointed fox, and ruler in a state
of undress, running a democracy to settle scores
with perceived enemies, whether students raising
fists calling for books, jobs, light and food,
or women saying they are the only proprietors of
their bodies, and women calling for news of
their disappeared husbands and children, or doctors
and nurses asking for medicines to stave off
unnecessary dying. We are facing ruin, not only
on the island, and we need to marshal forces,
to unite the struggle, the Aragalaya, behind
a plan which cannot be vetoed, which represents
the only way out of the maze, and which
insists that nobody will be charged for
expressing opposition, for speaking and
singing from within, and against, the darkness.
