April Showers and Tears (poem)

Showers and Tears

April is spring time,
a season of rain and renewal,
but also a time of countless tears.
Three major genocides of the twentieth century
have their sad anniversaries in April.

Showers and Tears

April is spring time,
a season of rain and renewal,
but also a time of countless tears.
Three major genocides of the twentieth century
have their sad anniversaries in April.

The Rwandan genocide memorial day is April 7.
It is the day of the first mass killings of Tutsis.
The slaughter rapidly took place in 1994
after the president’s plane was shot down by deadly missiles.
100 days of brutal deaths by machette followed.

The Holocaust is symbolically remembered
with the Hebrew date of the Warsaw Uprising in 1943.
This year it falls on April 11.
The gas chambers and crematoria are silent now,
but so many innocents perished in the horrific frenzy.

The Armenian genocide ceremonies take place on April 24.
This is the date in 1915
when hundreds of priests, intellectuals and community leaders
were arrested en masse in Constantinople.
It was the prelude to the death marches of so many of their kin.

These people were all targeted for death
because of their ethnic membership.
As Daniel Goldhagen warns:
"It is worse than war".
It is the most insidious kind of hatred
and perverse desire to destroy.

The genocidal sequence
involves increasingly malevolent deeds.
The essence of these terrible actions
can be found in powerful, profoundly troubling verbs.

The Verbs of Genocide

Categorized
Stereotyped
Stigmatised
Marginalized
Disenfranchised.
Deprived
Victimized
Robbed
Ghettoised
Deported.
Stripped
Raped
Tortured
Murdered.
Mutilated
Dismembered
Discarded
Denied.

Forgotten?
No!
Remembered.