Because we were People of No Consequence
For the people of “no consequence” of Baga and elsewehere
Because we were People of No Consequence
Neither cartoonists nor gods
ever bothered to choose us
No Holy Book ever extolled us
No Funnies ever besmirched us
Our Plagues were not worthy
of newspapers nor literature.
We had no Tuileries nor Towers
Our “gendarmes” were an international force
only because we were remembered
at appropriate moments
We had no heroic squads of firefighters
We had to put out our flames
with our own leaky buckets
from a drying out lake
Yes, the unmentionable
Body of Water of No International Consequence
enjoying extensive reportage on National Geographic
whose edges were shrinking
and yielded fewer fish
so many of us,
the fortunate ones,
left ten years ago
to wait for the fish to take bait
or be dragged in the nets
elsewhere, in other shores.
They, the lucky ones,
picked up and went
on their own sturdy legs
Some may have got caught
in the malevolent winds of history
their patched up sails
unworthy of/unfit for navigation
But, we the stationary ones
stayed there to withstand other Plagues
born in the Laboratories of Power
born in the Halls of Economics and Politics
Our bodies now “litter” the streets
un-artfully strewn
for the photographer’s lens to catch
for the satellite’s distant eye to probe
No dignity or privacy accorded to us
whether we be 150 or 2000
a herd
of People of No Consequence
forever leveling our accusation
to faraway stars.
Pina Piccolo, 18/01/2015