God Bless America
--
S. Sivasegaram
Your Excellency
the President of the United States of America,
I, an
American citizen,
speak
from a room within a burning tower
where
lights suddenly went off
following
the impact of an air plane
that struck
like a thunderbolt.
I know
not the direction in which you are.
Nevertheless,
since
the all mighty American intelligence
has ears
in every direction and
since
my legs are too weak
to stand
while addressing to you,
I remain
seated and
speak
in the direction in which I view.
Your Excellency,
forgive
my inability to stand facing you
while
addressing you,
for it
is not out of disrespect, and
be kind
to listen to my words.
Your Excellency,
darkness
reigns supreme in this room while
that thundering
sound still rings in my ears,
piercing
through the screams of fear that fill them.
It bears
the sound of the explosion
that declared
American nuclear might
fifty-six
years ago in Hiroshima.
Embedded
within it is the roar
that later
spread through Korea, then Vietnam and
heard
until yesterday in Belgrade and
still
raging in Iraq.
The voices
of fear and the screams of death
that flood
my ears
echo the
voices born of every throat
that was
strangled on every land
that lost
its sovereignty to America
for the
supremacy of American sovereignty to survive.
Thoughts
that were denied expression
in every
language that was killed and
in every
language that is being killed
are spoken
aloud in it.
The heat
of the fire that has encircled
and laid
siege to this building
is rising
slowly but steadily.
Its every
degree rise
is taking
me close to the Vietnamese peasant
who experienced
the heat of the napalm bombs
sprayed
across Vietnam
by American
war planes.
Alongside
the heat of the air,
the odour
of smoke and the toxic fumes
that enter
my lungs through my nostrils, I sense that
I have
now received a share of the poison gas
distributed
to Kurdish villagers
with the
blessings of America
and chemical
fumes donated early one morning
by Union
Carbide
to the
city of Bhopal.
Now darkness
has subdued this room.
I could
only guess where its walls are.
But my
vision penerates the darkness
and the
walls of the building:
half a
century of history
unfolds
before my eyes.
I see
bloodstains on the military hands
that uphold
American domination.
The blood
of half a million
communist
suspects in Indonesia
and the
blood that flowed over many lands
from Vietnam
through the Dominican Republic to Panama
are embedded
there.
I am not
frightened by its sight.
Amid the
imprints of blood
many faces
known and unknown
parade
before my eyes.
For every
face that feared
and every
face that surrendered
I see
a hundred of defiance.
Mossadeq,
Lumumba, Allende …
For every
face that conspiracy conquered
smile
a hundred that vanquished conspiracy.
Mao, Kim
Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh …
Before
Castro could be toppled in Cuba
Chavel
stands up in Venezuela.
From the
he boy who throws stones in Palestine
to the
armed militants of
Colombia,
the Philippines and Nepal, and
the defiant
Iraqi and Afghan,
fighters
join in parade
in a long
march begun long ago.
Now I
realise that
Qadaffi,
Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden
may be
eliminated, but not terror, for
the source
of terror is
not elsewhere
but right here.
I still
do not lose heart, for
the liberation
of America is today
interwoven
with that of the world.
Let the
collapse of this tower be a symbol
of the
fall of a terror that made America
the enemy
of the world.
Let it
be the beginning of the end of
a goddess
of evil bearing the trident of
exploitation,
oppression and war.
Your Excellency
the President
I love
America more than I love
my life
that will soon depart:
not the
America that you seek to save,
but the
America that strives
to save
itself from you -
an America
for the whole world to love.
God bless
that America!
__________________________________________________________________________
Prof. S. Sivasegaram, a
poet and social commentator, teaches at the University of Peradeniya,
Sri Lanka.
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