Business and Human Rights in Verse: Poem 3

This is the 3rd in a mini-series of attempts to approach themes of 'Business and Human Rights' in verse. The 1st was 'Big Data' and the 2nd 'Supply Chain' (see previous two posts).

‘Dance the Guns to Silence’: some Business and Human Rights in verse

Dr Jolyon Ford

Associate Professor of Law, Australian National University

                                                                                                                                                November 2018

III.

Extractive

They came at night. It matters not,

What they did exactly, it does not matter.

Let us not try say what they took or did:

The gun will serve the highest bidder.

Across the valley the rotors’ throb

Tells us he comes to see the mines.

Beneath the ridge the scarred land drops

To where we sit and wait in lines.

The low hills crouch, they have given up.

The land is beaten down.

It too has learned this will only stop

When all sign of struggle is gone.

There is no dawn that brings them home,

No song of comfort sung.

They exist only if we remember them,

When all is said, and all is done.

From the camp we hear the shift bells ring,

This is not a place for dreaming.

You will not hear our voices sing,

But nor will you hear the screaming.

In this rich earth, a richer dust concealed,

Though we dig, it is not for truth.

Grass in the breeze where the scar has healed,

Mocks their futile defiant youth.

Some system did all this for gain,

And made our rivers burn.

It took our very soil away

And so our soul in turn.

And so here now we that remain

Mine the seams of lessons never learned,

Listen to the scoured land in its pain,

Wait without hope for their ghosts’ return.

                                                                                                                                 

Cambridge MA, 31 Oct. 2018