– Richard Falk

 

Asphalt rain

darkens green fields

eco-extinction

flares Amazon skies

Fake leaders slithering

toward real dangers

hither and yon

seek safe havens

Gated nations

hiding from truth

screaming ‘no’

migrants fleeing despair

Pleading ‘please’

hiding from evils

Aung San Suu Ky

defending genocide

This fallen Nobelist

broadcasting abroad

her deadly message

two centuries ago

Walt Whitman

arrived in our midst

singing aloud

bewilderingly

Of America’s future

later lost to predators

seizing their loot

robbing the land

 

 

 

Turning dreams

to wilting flowers

our grief becomes

a betrayed destiny

 

Tainted at birth

natives driven

off their sacred land

of holy innocence

 

The trusted voice

of Toni Morrison

is gone not lost

if we listen

 

if we listen

if we listen

 

All not yet all

lost futureless

nested eggs contain

our only hope

 

Of what may yet come

of what to renounce

let’s start with gold

then learn not to hate

keep love joy truth

 

If we listen

if we listen

if we listen

first, then act.

– About the Author

Richard Falk is Chair of Global Law, Queen Mary University London, Faculty of Law. He received his undergraduate degree in economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, a law degree from Yale Law School, and a Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) from Harvard Law School. After teaching international and criminal law at the Ohio State University College of Law, he was appointed a Professor of International Law at Princeton University and the Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law and Practice for several decades.