A Song for Many Movements
This is the final installment of a 3 part exploration of our school’s humanities topics: Power and Powerlessness, What Does it Mean to be Human?, and How Than Shall I Live? Against the political backdrop of 2026 and all the uncertainty that accompanied it, Lorde reminded us that “Our labor has become more important than our silence”
A Song for Many Movements
Nobody wants to die on the way
caught between ghosts of whiteness
and the real water
none of us wanted to leave
our bones
on the way to salvation
three planets to the left
a century of light years ago
our spices are separate and particular
but our skins sing in complimentary keys
at a quarter to eight mean time
we were telling the same stories
over and over and over.
Broken down gods survive
in the crevasses and mudpots
of every beleaguered city
where it is obvious
there are too many bodies
to cart to the ovens
or gallows
and our uses have become
more important than our silence
after the fall
too many empty cases
of blood to bury or burn
and there will be no body left
to listen
and our labor
has become more important
than our silence
Our labor has become
more important
than our silence.