In the Matter of Lives

Tags

Australian poet, Black Lives Matter, BLM, Formal poetry, Irish persecution, Persecution of the Jews, poem, poetry, Russian serfdom, Slavery, Spenserian sonnet, Victimhood

𝐈𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐋𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬

And so the argument it goes like so:
That those whose ancestors were once enslaved
Now suffer for such deeds done long ago.
That on their psyches deeply are engraved,
In bitter words their hate for the depraved
Who bound their forebears up in ropes and chains.
And thus they suffer; all their lives they’ve braved,
Discrimination — seared into their brains
This feeling that they nurture — fact remains
An outcast, for the truth is hard and cold:
Man’s ownership of man the record stains —
In many ways were men once bought and sold.
But victimhood descendants may eschew —
The Irish peasant, Russian serf, the Jew.

— D.N. O’Brien