Before I start this poem, I'd like to ask you to join me
In a moment of silence
In honour of those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon
last September 11th. I would also like to ask you To offer up a moment of
silence For all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned, disappeared,
tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes, For the victims
in both Afghanistan and the US
And if I could just add one more thing...
A full day of silence
For the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the hands of
US-backed Israeli forces over decades of occupation. Six months of silence
for the million and-a-half Iraqi people, mostly children, who have died of
malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 11-year US embargo against
the country.
Before I begin this poem,
Two months of silence for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa, Where
homeland security made them aliens in their own country. Nine months of
silence for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Where death rained down
and peeled back every layer of concrete, steel, earth and skin And the survivors
went on as if alive. A year of silence for the millions of dead in Vietnam
- a people, not a war - for those who know a thing or two about the scent
of burning fuel, their relatives' bones buried in it, their babies born of
it. A year of silence for the dead in Cambodia and Laos, victims of a secret
war .... ssssshhhhh.... Say nothing ... we don't want them to learn that
they are dead. Two months of silence for the decades of dead in Colombia,
Whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have piled up and slipped
off our tongues.
Before I begin this poem.
An hour of silence for El Salvador ...
An afternoon of silence for Nicaragua ...
Two days of silence for the Guatemaltecos ...
None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years. 45 seconds
of silence for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas 25 years of silence for the
hundred million Africans who found their graves far deeper in the ocean
than any building could poke into the sky. There will be no DNA testing
or dental records to identify their remains. And for those who were strung
and swung from the heights of sycamore trees in the south, the north, the
east, and the west...
100 years of silence...
For the hundreds of millions of indigenous peoples from this half of right
here,
Whose land and lives were stolen,
In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, Fallen
Timbers, or the Trail of Tears. Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic
poetry on the refrigerator of our consciousness ...
So you want a moment of silence?
And we are all left speechless
Our tongues snatched from our mouths
Our eyes stapled shut
A moment of silence
And the poets have all been laid to rest
The drums disintegrating into dust.
Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence
You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won't be.
Not like it always has been.
Because this is not a 9/11 poem.
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem
This is a 1492 poem.
This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written. And if
this is a 9/11 poem, then: This is a September 11th poem for Chile, 1971.
This is a September 12th poem for Steven Biko in South Africa, 1977. This
is a September 13th poem for the brothers at Attica Prison, New York, 1971.
This is a September 14th poem for Somalia, 1992.
This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground in ashes This is
a poem for the 110 stories that were never told The 110 stories that history
chose not to write in textbooks The 110 stories that CNN, BBC, The New York
Times, and Newsweek ignored. This is a poem for interrupting this program.
And still you want a moment of silence for your dead?
We could give you lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves
The lost languages
The uprooted trees and histories
The dead stares on the faces of nameless children
Before I start this poem we could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.
If you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights,
Delete the instant messages,
Derail the trains, the light rail transit.
If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window of Taco
Bell, And pay the workers for wages lost. Tear down the liquor stores, The
townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the Penthouses and the Playboys.
If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it
On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July
During Dayton's 13 hour sale
Or the next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful
people have gathered.
You want a moment of silence
Then take it NOW,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
In the space between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence.
Take it.
But take it all... Don't cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime. But we, Tonight we will
keep right on singing... For our dead.
EMMANUEL ORTIZ, 11 Sep 2002
