Quote of the day - excerpt from poem by Saideh Pakravan

. . . The world has kept on turning. A quarter-century later, the Burmese military can join hands with God to swat a million people who drift with swollen bellies on the Irrawaddy Delta, ungainly water lilies floating among the debris washed here and there on the sluggish waves then, as an afterthought, decorating the carcasses on the bank where sharp-eyed carrions cannot believe their luck. Meanwhile, in a distant palace, a general undoes his armored vest to allow his full belly to expand. He burps and through his empty mind passes no thought of those drifting bodies nor of the tens of thousands crushed by hunger, sorrow, and pelting rain. Instead, sated after his meal, he vaguely surveys mentally the accumulated riches sent by a grieving world, signals for his plate to be removed, unwary of the waiter who approaches, thick kitchen chopper in hand and who splits open his skull, the waiter who has lost eleven family members in the Delta, who will avenge them so their souls can float away in peace, who no longer minds paying the price. Saïdeh Pakravan