What’s the citizenship of pain?
Some criticize those who feel other’s pain like their own
Who grieve for those who drown
Suffer for those bearing the sting of lashes on their backs.
They ask why weep for strangers
people who do not share their same history, language,
their daily bread:
the boy the sea left onshore,
dressed in his best travel suit: his little shoes well-polished,
his shirt, the socks he thought would carry him to his new life
To find instead his mouth filled with sand and salt
Seashells whispering in his ear news of his own death.
What’s the citizenship of pain?
Does each human heart display a map that bears only its own geography?
No man is an island wrote the poet John Donne. And he also said:
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
The world’s bells toll sounding the alarm.
Borders and prison cells, cities and schools, town halls and the sea
are filled with images of dead bodies
desolation envelopes the comfort of our lives piercing holes in
our daily indifference.
One day they will come for us.
That day we will regret our denial to feel pain when we see
someone sentenced to death,
a city reduced to rubble, prisoners beheaded,
a woman stoned to death for adultery.
Some people ration their tears
as if our bodies did not contain in abundance
water such as that where people drown
after they abandon the shine of their own land
to board the boats for the dispossessed.
Each death strips us of life.
We use words to trick our hearts.
We speak out against violence even though we are its instigators.
Solidarity is a worn-out idea
it slips through the cracks of razor-sharp arguments
that cut rather than shield the soul.
The bells toll for us,
And we must own other’s pains
dare to erase borders
take a stand for compassion.
*Translated by Alba Hawkins