In September this year, Kathy
Jitnil-Kijner, a 26-year-old poet from the Marshall Islands recited her poem
for her infant daughter at the UN Climate Summit. The poem highlighted the
dreadful results of climate change and received a standing ovation, and was
also reported to have “brought world leaders to tears”.
Instead of explaining more on the
poem, we present to you the poem itself:
Dear Matafele Peinem
“Dear Matafele Peinem
You are a seven-month old sunrise of
gummy smiles
You are bald as an egg,
And bald as the Buddha.
Your thighs are a thunder,
Shrieks that are lightning.
So excited for bananas, hugs
And our morning walks along the
lagoon.
Dear Matafele Peinem,
I want to tell you about that lagoon,
That lucid, sleepy lagoon,
Lounging against the sunrise.
Men say that one day, that lagoon
will
Devour You.
They say it will knock at the
shoreline,
Chew at the roots of your breadfruit
tree,
Gulp down rows of your seawalls,
And crunch through your
island-shattered bones,
They say you, your daughter and your
granddaughter, too,
Will wander rootless,
With only a passport to call home.
Dear Matafele Peinem,
Don’t cry.
Mummy promises you,
No one will come and devour you.
No greedy whale of a company,
Sharking through political seas,
No backwater bullying of businesses
with broken morals,
No blindfolded bureaucracies,
Are going to push this Mother Ocean
over the edge.
No one is drowning, baby.
No one’s moving.
No one’s losing their homeland.
No one’s going to become a climate
change refugee.
Or should I say, no one else.
To
the Carteret islanders of Papua New Guinea,
And
to the Taro islanders of Fiji,
I
take this moment,
To
apologize to you.
We
are drawing the line here,
Because
baby, we are going to fight,
Your
mommy, daddy,
Bubu,Jimma,
your country, and president, too.
We
will all fight.
And
even though there are thosehidden behind platinum titles,
Who
like to pretendthat we don’t exist,
That
the Marshall Islands – Tuvalu, Kiribati, Maldives,
And
Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines,
And
the floods of Pakistan, Algeria, and Colombia,
And
hurricanes, earthquakes, and tidalwaves,
Didn’t
exist.
Still,
there are those,
Who
see us,
Hands
reaching out,
Fists
raising up,
Banners
unfurling,
Megaphones
booming.
And
we arecanoes blocking coal ships,
We
arethe radiance of solar villages,
We
arethe rich clean soil of the farmer’s past,
We
arepetitions blooming from teenage fingertips,
We
arefamilies biking, recycling, reusing,
Engineers
dreaming, designing, building,
Artists
painting, dancing, writing,
We
are spreading the word.
And
there are thousands out on the street,
Marching
with signs,
Hand
in hand,
Chanting
for change now.
They’re
marching for you, baby
They’re
marching for us.
Because
we deserve to do more than justsurvive,
We
deserveto thrive.
Dear
Matafele Peinem,
Your
eyes are heavy,
With
drowsy weight,
So
just close those eyes, baby,
And
sleep in peace,
Because
we won’t let you down.
You’ll
see.”
Here’s
the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJuRjy9k7GA
Spread
the word, speak out, make a change.
And plant a tree, today.
SGI works with the twin objectives of combating climate change caused by
the billion of us in urban areas as well as helping the billion who
sleep hungry, have the assurance of two daily meals!
One of the most tried and tested -- and promising -- method to combat
climate change is a simple one: plant trees. Planting trees takes care
of a host of issues -- from pollution abatement to creating sustainable
livelihoods.
