Why don’t they just negotiate?
A poem
Doves and vultures
chit and chat,
and canaries hatch,
sing warnings for years
before they die,
and generations of children
are born, get degrees,
and grants to study
the whys of peace but praise for war,
while doves and vultures
still chit and chat
and presidents and ministers
flap their wings to Stockholm
to collect Nobel bling,
and doves and vultures still
chit and chat
and presidents and ambassadors still
yak, yak, yak,
and profits slump and profits peak,
and climate talks also
chat and yak
as glaciers melt and icecaps crack,
while canaries hatch, and canaries die
alongside miners, underground,
and ministers speak, and yak, and yak
while soldiers and airplanes attack
Palestine, Iran, and again Ukraine
and profits peak
and children die
as shells and missiles strike the land,
and doves and vultures
yet chit and chat
and presidents, ministers
praise the peace process,
and children wait,
and children starve,
and perhaps grow old—
unless they die
and some peace-loving fools,
dumbfounded,
ask,
“Why don’t they just negotiate?”
Featured image credit: Wikimedia Commons; modified by Tempest.
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DonateSam Friedman View All
Samuel R. Friedman is a lifelong social activist and long-time socialist. His writings on social justice topics include about 50 publications on workers’ movements, how we might create socialism, political economy, racism or social movements—including Teamster Rank and File (Columbia University Press, 1982) and “What happened in Ukraine” (2015). He currently is a research professor of Population Health at a leading New York university and previously the Director of the Institute for Infectious Disease Research at National Development and Research Institutes in New York. He has published two books of poetry (most recently A Precious Residue: Poems that ponder efforts to spark a working class socialism in the 1970s and after. October 17, 2022. https://imhojournal.org/wp-content/uploads/Friedman-S.-2022.-A-Precious-Residue.pdf) as well as several chapbooks and many individual poems. He is the author of over 500 publications on HIV, COVID-19, STI and drug use epidemiology, prevention and harm reduction. He is a member of the Tempest Collective, Jewish Voice for Peace, the Ukraine Solidarity Network, the Central Jersey Coalition Against Endless War, and the People’s CDC. He can be reached at sam4wp@netscape.net