In your kitchen washing dishes,
Dreaming dreams, making wishes.
Door slams open,
Evils here.
Knocking over pram and chair.
You have become the disappeared.
No fair trial by judge for you.
No twelve men good and true.
Just the bullet from a gun.
No time left to make your peace.
No goodbye with kiss to cheek.
Thrown into a shallow grave.
Without a prayer by ordained priest.
Missing the important days.
While winning races painting faces.
Every memory is tainted.
Coloured by the death you knew.
God given right to live your life.
Stolen by the evil night.
Who planned your death?
As though they had the right.
So the years have moved along.
Children grown, lives go on.
A mothers pride was not in place.
The missing hugs cant be replaced.
Dreams at night so full of fear.
When your Mams become the disappeared
A nice write but such a sad situation. Beautifully written piece.
A beautiful, powerful and moving poem on the terrible truth of what happened to so many people in those years!
Your such a talented poet Noreen, who writes beautiful poems.
A wonderful poem Noreen. So many innocent lives lost, so many lives devastated. You ask in your poem.... Who planned your death......... the people who actually issued the orders were never brought to justice. They are probably proud of the part they had to play. I often wonder how they can sleep at night. You could have entitled this poem....Lest We Forget....... This is a story that needs to be kept alive in our memories.
noreen, finally a poem i haven't read before. but a sad one! the following line is my favorite line and seems to summarize the poem's drift. Stolen by the evil night. thanks for sharing. bri :)
The tragic scenes portrayed in a soulful yet poetically awesome rhymin way for which u deserve kudos. Sensational style how u weave the kitchen scene into it eh.
It is a terrible situation to be confronted.... People suddenly made to disappear at the point of a gun and nothing is heard of them.... Children getting orphaned and men living in eternal trauma of the memory of an insidious incident that happens overnight! You have powerfully pictured the ferocity of unanticipated violence! !
That is the insidious nature of civilian warfare. Soldiers in uniform follow codes of conduct, officers enforce them, international tribunals punish offenders. But an undeclared war conducted by civilians has no governance, and apparently no pity. Just the idea of breaking into a HOME, where children live and learn, and family members share the work and love, is atrocious. If you want to locate original sin, there it is. Turning the house into a battlefield and the home into a place of horror. Your poem has a gravitas which is far more effective than my ranting. My words would mean nothing to a committed warrior - they would offend him because he feels he has justice on his side. Your words, however, just might remind him of the homelife he may yet remember.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
Good poem Noreen. The 'problems' in your land seem to go on and on. There doesn't seem to be any answer to it all - I wish there were.