After Ocumare by Yolanda Pantin (Venezuelan Poet)
See what we’ve done here.
Is that our anger stampeding
on the hearts of the young?
Is this the air we feed them,
their tender lungs expanding
to each breath laden with terror?
We’re so bold in our announcements,
we’re so bold and so outrageously
possessed with malice, deaf to the acoustics
rising from our disasters.
Daily the world undresses itself to reveal
scars on bodies so soft and unseasoned.
And we have the most ridiculous response
to it all.
You tell me you are tempted to deflower
the virgin earth, where blood hasn’t flowed yet?
Your horrid desire aching to elongate itself to
all corners where children hide in presumed safety.
I can tell you now, there isn’t a virgin patch left to bleed out.
We have razed all the corners of this world,
where a child might assume to live unscathed.
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