Poem by Grace Cavalieri

WHO WE ARE
 
“The cry did knock/against
                        my very heart…”  The Tempest
 
When we do not feed the hungry children in Biafra
Looking at tourists, then we are the camera, staring.
If we do not take away their starvation, then
We are also the black marketeers who stole their food.
We are the karmic seeds of Viet Nam
Running ablaze with fire on our backs.
We’re the hummingbird flying the Atlantic in March.
We are Katrina because clothes were soaked, and when
There was no more food, when no help came,
We were the empty verbs.
These are the tears that come unbidden for Mozambique,
For starving children in the trees,
Waiting for rescue helicopters. All this,
When there were other possibilities.
Don’t you feel the heartbeat of the earth, the knob
We could turn? The magical tree we could put back in the rain forest?
Can you count the number of women sold to slavery we could wrap  
In warm cotton and bring back home? 
Riding an idea is like riding the wind
Unless we harness its lonely tumult, unless we give the fruits
Of the earth to open mouths and aching stomachs.
We are the rain on the cold hungry dog in the streets of Chile,
The disfigured man in prison, the mass deaths in Bosnia.
We are the shame of the soldier who thought he should
Die instead of his buddy. We are the broken clock of
The widows of war, their last dreams filled with absence.
If we are the ones who do not feed, comfort or save--
We are the grave.                                         

AFRICA

Children sitting in the dirt all in a row
Children sitting in the dirt
A row of children in the dirt
Tin cups in a row
Flies in the eyes of children
A row of children in the dirt
Children with big bellies 
Dear God what is the perfection in this?
That we see and still believe?

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​Grace Cavalieri is Maryland's tenth Poet Laureate. She's founder/ producer of "The Poet and the Poem" on public radio ,celebrating 44 years on-air, now produced at the Library of Congress. Her new poetry book is The Secret Letters of Madame de Stael (Goss pub. 2021).

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