FEBRUARY 2022

Myanmar Spring

#ThursdayThoughts, #Social Justice

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On Sunday, February 13, 2022 --- one year and thirteen days after the military coup which overthrew the fledgling democratic government in Myanmar --- I attended a benefit showing of Padauk: Myanmar Spring. This documentary film depicts the transformation of the peaceful civil disobedience movement that sprang up spontaneously after the coup, into a clandestine armed resistance movement, now allied with ethnic militias which have been fighting for the rights of their peoples in the Burmese hills since the end of World War II. 

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As we waited for the film to begin, a friend told of an airstrike and raid on an orphanage in the hills just the night before. Her mother had dedicated her life to supporting this orphanage. The newly-built structures and nearby villagers’ homes and fields had been destroyed and three children burned alive. “What else is there to do,” asked this friend, “except listen?”

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All week I struggled to write a poem that would convey the enormity of the human tragedy that is unfolding in Myanmar.. On Friday, February 18, 2022, CNN published an updated article about a swarm of yellow-headed blackbirds which plunged inexplicably to the ground in a residential area in Chihuahua, Mexico on February 7. It is thought that the birds headed down to escape the attack of a large predator, such as a peregrine falcon, and couldn’t pull back up in time. Hundreds of birds died from the impact. This brief clip gave me the concluding metaphor I was looking for...

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The tiny charred bodies
are all that remain of
three children burned alive. 

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The Burman armed forces
use airstrikes and raids
to obliterate ethnic hill tribes.

 

Everything lost,
frightened villagers stream
toward death or refugee camps.

 

Ruthless power bears down
on powerlessness with
unspeakable cruelty.

 

In the Mexican sky 
a fierce predator
dives into a swarm of birds.

 

To escape, the birds plunge
like rain from the clouds.
On impact, they’re crushed. All die.

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