We were the niggers and the wogs under
The other Pax; now, Pax AmericanaAllows us to identify with whites:
The great dream of two cars, two kids, a mortgage.
We don't look down on blacks: they don't exist.
People with acrophobia never
Look down on their way up: The African-
Americans are locked up, anyway.
Today, in Bangladesh, we have the vote
And think we're free; but Jim Crow tells us
He never wanted to vote when set free
But to be able to sit on the jury
To avoid collective re-enslavement:
Now he's back where he started with the vote, like us.
The Poppy Blossom
Farmers - that is, almost everyone in Ghowr [a province of Afghanistan] - have fallen deeply in debt. The most desperate have sold their daughters. The rest have planted poppies.... "In other countries they use opium for enjoyment. Here they grow that their children not die," said one [farmer] sadly.
- The Economist, 27th August, 2003
To make the world safe from democracy;
To shield our daughters, and to save our brothers:These are the duties of the weak today.
To stand beneath a rain of bombs as though
It were the downpour that would slake this drought;
To stand before a hail of bullets as
Though it were the syringe seeking the vein
Until our daughters' faces blur and fade...
How is she now, you weep and wonder, mother;
The daughter whom you bore and cradled bore
The fruit of womanhood, like poppy-blossom;
Does she intoxicate the men who come...?
Next year there are elections; those with drug-
Money will buy up votes: I should take up drug-running.
GUNS BURIED IN FLOWERS
In 1971 India helped Bangladesh break away from western Pakistan. To India, the secession by Bengali-speaking Muslims showed that language and culture are thicker than religion. To Pakistan, it was proof of India's malign intent.
- The Economist, May 22, 1999
Language and culture on the one hand, and
Religion on the other; not all nations hadTo make a choice like this: and why should we?
Not even Poland had to choose between
Catholicism and Chopin! An eccentric
Nation covets the symmetry of
Concentric states in the fraternal radii
Of one civilisation.
In '47
My grandfather, obedient to Jinnah,
Crossed the border, never looked back; today,
I see a middle-aged man reading Rumi
And Saadi; bequest lost to me until
Recently, when the English language, like
A universal music, interpreted Persia.
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