We, the charred animals, who fought your wars,
defended your democracy,
endured your endless humiliation,
we, the charred ones, who fought your wars,
we wept when you refused to
acknowledge
your wrong,
to repent your endless atrocities
against us.
You passed up the opportunity to
make atonement for your sins
before God and man
down in South Africa,
your not-long-ago bloody bastion
of bigotry—
of segregation,
and snow-white apartheid.
Yea, we wept with the untouchable ones
on the subcontinent;
yea, we wept with the first nation peoples
of the world;
yea, we wept with all the oppressed
of the world;
we wept with the oppressed
and our tears touched,
our tears flowed across the oceans
and touched
and pooled in every land
with tears of the oppressed in every land,
touched, until the pool of lamentation
overflowed
and touched the Master’s hand—
yea, until the pool of lamentation
overflowed
and touched the Master’s hand.
Copyright ©2001 by Newton V. Chance
- G. NEWTON V. CHANCE
- George Newton Vivian Chance (Trinidad and Tobago) -- member of the Poet Society of Trinidad and Tobago, http://poetssocietytt.blogspot.com/ and the World Poets Society, http://world-poets.blogspot.com/ -- born in Tobago on 3rd March 1957. While residing at Rio Claro was inspired to write over a hundred poems at the turn of the Millennium. Hobbies include playing wind instruments, building computers, observing nature, reading and writing poetry. Believes that the power of a song is in its ability to evoke emotions by the marriage of lyric and music but that music without lyric can be just as powerful, that lyric without music can also be just as powerful, that there is music in the lyric and that lyric can be simple yet profound. Also, in this the age of computers, would like to model his lines after simple and efficient code and, analogous to Object Oriented Programming, achieve most of his imagery from nouns and verbs, avoiding the bloat and excess of unnecessary adjectives. This is what he aspires to attain in his poetry.
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