Has Pain Citizenship?

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

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