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this is a poem from Joanne Baker of Voices in the Wilderness, Bristol - she
says she wrote it on a train, travelling to do a talk, uncertain as to what
to say - for all who have travelled in Iraq, she has said it all.
Saddam Hussein Hospital, Baghdad.
(No gas chamber here)
I want to weep.
I want to grieve
with her, whose child
cries out in pain
feebly
no strength for tears.
I want to rage.
I want to be the voice
of she, who wails
'My child is dead.
My child is dead!'
No gas chamber here.
No quick exit
for small lives.
as blood drips
from nose
and throat.
and tumours press against
the stomach wall.
Relentless hours of
suffering and pain.
Flies gather and
the plastic sheeting sweats.
No gas chamber here.
No hooded executioner to
stalk these wards.
Only weary doctors, saying,
'Like you, we cry.
What else is there to do?'
No open decree
from the corridors of global power
which says:
'Every six minutes
one Iraqi child
must die!'
Yet die they must and do.
For what? For oil?
For us? What price?
A child's life.
The shroud is silence.
--
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