My friend Satya sent me the link to this amazing poem – thank you, faraway friend!
Click on the title of this post – it'll take you to a video of the original Spanish version, read by the poet Gioconda Belli herself. Listen and watch even if you don't speak Spanish – enjoy her voice, powerful, and angry, and determined.
Let's all stand up against any violence inflicted on girls and women; let us stand up against any violence – period!
As I couldn't find an English version, here's my translation of Belli's extraordinary words:
Long-haired the curvy Day of the Women arises
How short this is – just the one day, sisters!
How little time for the world to heap flowers outside our dwellings…
From the cradle into which we were born, to the grave where we will sleep
the whole embattled road of our lives
they ought to pave with flowers to celebrate us
They must not do to us what they did to Princess Diana, who neither saw nor heard
the flower-strewn avenues of London buckling under the pain –
we – we want to see and smell the flowers…
We want flowers from those who did not celebrate
when we were born female rather than male –
we want flowers from those who cut out our clitoris
and from those who bound our feet…
We want flowers from those who did not send us to school
but made us look after our brothers and help in the kitchen…
Flowers from him who came to our bed at night to rape us
and gagged us while our mother slept…
We want flowers from him who paid us less for the toughest work
and from him who sacked us when he knew we were pregnant…
We want flowers from him who sent us to our death
forcing us to risk our life to give birth
We want flowers from him who protects himself from bad thoughts
by making us wear the veil and hide our body –
from him who bans us from going out without a male chaperone…
We want flowers from those who burnt us as witches and locked us up as madwomen –
flowers from him who beats us up, from him who gets pissed –
from him who squanders the wages that should buy food for a month…
We want flowers from the women who scheme against us and spread lies –
flowers from the women who vent their anger against their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law
whose hearts hold but poison for their own gender…
Long-haired the curvy Day of the Women arises –
we want as many flowers today as we truly deserve –
the garden from which they banished us...
