Monstrous Tears
Who are they for, these monstrous tears
So blinding in their eloquence
That flow un-damned to water nothing
But your sense of helplessness?
Are they for yourself?
For the loss of what you see before you
From the comfort of your distant home?
Are these tears of relief, of thankfulness
That the face before the lens is not your own?
Or is it that you see in her,
The stick-thin child who disappears
Before your eyes, that even now
Lies silent in the dirt of Mother Africa,
Some fleeting glimpse of how things really are?
She couldn’t see beyond the camera,
Or cry with empty eyes for all that
Suffering placed about her too brief life
By others. She was too small to understand,
Too young to feel outraged,
Too weak to lift a hand.
So sit, and look, and feel,
And cry for her again.
Keep crying so the tears can never stop
But turn from pity into anger,
From sadness to a deeper horror,
From a sense of distant helplessness
To a painful new decisiveness.
Yes, arm yourself with tears,
But make them truly monstrous.
