Gazette 99, What Have The Strong . . .

What Have The Strong Successful

Women Done For Us?

What have the strong successful women done for us,

Gandhi, Thatcher,

Meir, Marcos and Perόn?

Their aims were masculine, hungering for power

in their world of men;

not for the betterment of us, their sisters,

we who have no voice.

We are the down-trodden and the powerless,

we women walk a step behind our man,

carrying the burdens.

We are those subject to mutilation,

with its indignity and pain

and life-long suffering,

or forced, as little girls,

to marriage

or are raped.

Always it is the woman,

who, when violated, bears the blame,

The suffering by stoning,

or at least, the casting out from family and friends,

for we contaminate them with our guilt.

Impossible for us to rise

to be law-maker, a judge,

a power-broker, with the aim to rid the world of weapons,

nuclear “deterrents”, monitoring by stealth,

detention of illegal immigrants, or giving

health assistance to the poor.

For now, when we, the underprivileged,

or these our children, lack for food or clothing,

shelter, sanitation, water,

safety, treatment for disease,

our dire privations do not register with you,

you the fortunate ones well-housed, well-fed,

and elegantly coiffured.

Our children spend their days

scrabbling in toxic rubbish dumps,

detritus from those affluent across the world,

no education, work, or any hope

our pains may yet be lessened,

if you care.

We are the women and children

at the bottom of the heap.

Remember us and let us not continue to despair.

© Mary Kille