After Reading Edward Said Poem by Dennis Ryan

April 27,2006; revised Monday, February 11,2019 at 1: 10 p.m.

"Domination and inequalities in power and wealth are perennial facts
of human society.But in today's global setting they are also interpretable
as having something to do with imperialism, its history... The nations
of contemporary Asia, Latin America, and Africa are politically independent
but in many ways are as dominatedand dependent as they were when ruled
directly by European powers."
- Edward Said, from "Two Visions in Heart of Darkness"

"We are almost the disappeared ones, almost the invisible ones, missing,
lost somewhere in America.Maybe we will scatter, disperse, disappear..."
- Dennis Ryan, "Missing"

Like so much of Edward Said's writings,
my poetry has become a kind of "homecoming
expressed through defiance and loss—"
I write from the standpoint of exile,
from the standpoint of estrangement,
from the standpoint of the outsider,
the other—the whole world—whose
millions cry out for relief, mercy, care—
listen to their voices, feel how desperate ly they feel.
Listen to sounds of suppressed anger, defeat, defiance and fear.
Everybody wants to feel they belong, belong somewhere,
Said, myself included: "belonging, as it were, to both sides..."