A song for IDPs
by Noel Ihebuzor
(For BOSSASO and other IDPs)
Hope lies here poorly shriveled and shriveling,
withered and withering
once high hopes now desiccated dry
the hot tropical sun sits on the dying camp
oppressive and roasting, quickening rot,
a constant rain of dry dust flows
roams freely in this place of captivity
slowly drying and dimming the voices of the trapped dying living
Do you hear their voices, can you touch their pain, feel their shame
do you care to listen, do we dare to hear, care to share
do we need a third eye to see, a second tongue to speak up
No water runs here as life slowly runs out
no food grows here, despair bounds and grows,
this place of rock and stones arid
by a sea that rolls, simmers and boils
This place bursting at its seam with suffering in the sweltering
scorching suffocating heat
betrays the jungle in the hearts of men and women
for there is no logic to this place, no sense it
Good sense departed so many moons ago
care and compassion suffocated and hope now orphaned
The animal in us runs raw, ragged, ranting and dimming all sanity,
rages, savages, pillages in a sad presage of the triumph of the beast
Do you hear their voices, can you touch their pain, feel their shame
do you care to listen, do we dare to hear, care to share
do we need a third eye to see, a second tongue to speak up
Mothers and females, forlorn drag around their feeble frames
full of fear in this fiery place, haunted by fear
humiliated by hunger, haunted by anxiety
sagging flesh sits ugly awkward on tired bones
violated mothers their pride sold to nourish those they once suckled
suffer the chuckle and derision of their temporarily satiated invaders,
armed predators chuckle as victims hide their shame
and their pain in sphinx-like empty stares
hoping against hope that they caught nothing else
in the unequal exchange
Do you hear their voices, can you touch their pain, feel their shame
do you care to listen, do we dare to hear, care to share
do we need a third eye to see, a second tongue to speak up
Fathers and sons sit around sullen
avoiding each others’ gaze
hiding their fear and shame and hate
wedded to woes and wants
souls trapped, feeling man-less and impotent,
empty yet full and over running with rage
in this cauldron, hatred and anger cook, slowly, simmering
raw rage grows and fills every crevice
in bitter emptied dried out souls
Outside and beyond, the voices of good intentions, of
actors and reactors, benefactors and beneficiaries mesh
while the victims die in large numbers
their groans and hisses drone on
and are drowned by distance
Do you hear their voices, can you touch their pain, feel their shame
do you care to listen, do we dare to hear, care to share
do we need a third eye to see, a second tongue to speak up
The shrivelling thinning hair on the enlarged heads of children,
Fontanels fallen in
sad sullen eyes, empty sucked into large sinking sockets,
wrinkling, flaking aging skins, bursting balloon bellies
enlarged heads sit ugly on tiny martian-like necks
frames as if of new born lambs adorn once chubby children, all
announcing ungainly early return trips and escape from this place
where fear is fertile
Flies buzz around, settling on the yellowish phlegm that ooze from nostrils
drawn by the foul stench and litter of littered humanity
of wasting and decaying humanity
Do you hear their voices, can you touch their pain, feel their shame
do you care to listen, do we dare to hear, care to share
do we need a third eye to see, a second tongue to speak up
Hope runs dry in these running noses,
in running temperatures and running stomachs
and soon the earth will take into its already distended bowels
these ungainly sacrifices and the earth is desecrated.
Do you hear their voices, can you touch their pain, feel their shame
do you care to listen, do we dare to hear, care to share
do we need a third eye to see, a second tongue to speak up
Or do we simply continue to stare
***** I wrote this poem when I worked in Somalia somne seven years ago and after visiting IDP camps in Bosasso in Puntland, NE somalia and in Hargeisa. This particular sad song was triggered by the human misery I saw in those camps as we struggled to bring help and hope to victims of human folly! I saw the same misery in eastern DRC when I worked there! Noel
Reflections 