A call to arms.
A call to arms came as the lanterns floated upward
on a night of celebration, and as flares spun upward
out of the fear of those who set them.
As shawled women smiled in the night, prayed into the night,
and just as many ran through the swallowing night.
As a bed was shared between those shepherding each other,
and others shared nothing, nothing at all.
As doctors took their oaths and committed no harm,
but privileged some and denied others.
As another dies by the hands of a group of strangers,
and another by the hand of her father, and another
because a stranger was lost in the anger of his mother.
I'm telling you, the call to arms came as we slept,
and as we marched.
As we questioned, and as we hid our heads
in the dust of nostalgia or our spent dreams.
As bills came due.
As the debt grew and values diminished.
As women decided other women mattered less.
As we raged, and as we ignored.
And the doors began to close, and close, and close, and close,
and close.
And those who had opened them were
marked for death or forgetting.
And those who kicked them down are marked for death or slander.
And this is not the first time a call to arms
has caught us imagining it had stopped.
The call is ever, is constant.
Don't you hear it, don't you?
What, it didn't ring out in a peal of bells?
It rings out in the silent appeals of children.
A child who cannot remember the name of their father.
You aren't listening.
And if you are listening, you must keep your ear
to the street, to the field, to the alleys and bridges,
to the riverbeds, and floor planks of abandoned houses.
And I heard the call to arms like a moan
from a drain desperately clogged.
And in the lowing of cows in drought.
In the impotent drone of senators,
that officious blather.
And in this moment, I hear the call,
and realize I am not the lion, but the antelope.
And I must resort to my feet and my wits
amid a storm of teeth and claws on a day
that began as any other day.
And I can't tell you why I hear what too many refuse
to admit, like the pounding of your own hearts
upon hearing this.
[APPLAUSE]