For Those Who Died Loving the Powerless

photo credit to fotopedia here

A Poem to be Written Collectively...

There has been a terrible accident and so far at least four people, friends of my friends have died. (Very dedicated activists) I'm feeling SO deeply for all involved. More on the specifics later but I felt sure that those here on The Journey Blog would remember similar occasions and feelings and would have something to say. For now, the partial line which keeps coming to me is just the beginning of a poem...

For those who died loving the powerless...

I'm wondering if this poem might best be written COLLECTIVELY with various here who are activists and have a poetic-bent? - or even those with deeply-feeling hearts and souls - those who's own memories of loss are still unresolved or resolved or freshly remembered? Other activists who happen to come by today? Any who have gone through losing sisters, brothers, companions on this journey? Maybe we would write this together in a universal manner without details except the most common and without any nationality or religion or even ideology specified in this one case.

Here's another version of the above line:
Because of those who died loving...

Send your feelings and memories in ANY of the following languages as I now have people I know in each of them willing to translate:

French, German, Urdu, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Teso (Ugandan), and some languages from other African nations...Or even other languages for which together we might find translators?

No need even to send full lines or stanzas...just analogies, feelings, a line remembered from powerful literature or film, a partial line which comes to you with depth and emotion startling memory of your own?

I will try my best to somehow form what I am able to do - with or without the help of other poets - into One Poem or some sort of unified form...THIS IS TO BE AN ANONOMOUS EFFORT so I will not be giving credit in the poem itself to individuals. But I thank you each ahead of time!

As I was speaking with a lady who sold used books about this recent loss of friend across the world and mentioning the creature which may have been the reason for tragic accident (Perhaps the most detailed report said it was that it was a donkey.

Yet for the sake of universal connections any of us driving along such a road may well have encountered a similarly powerles deer or goat or a sheep?) she said "Well many consider something as powerless as such a creature to be without value and yet, who knows what that animal may have meant to the family to whom it belonged?" And suddenly my tears kept flowing as I imagined that the driver (and possibly the riders) collectively chose not to hit this creature for these reasons...as people whose life together was based on loving the powerless in many forms.


Children protesting the violence which kept their schools closed in Peshawar
found on news service IRIN February 2, 2006


Rural scene from a Day Out (on internet public space)