Benizar Bhutto Farewell
How beautiful you were to all the world:
With flashing eyes and crimson framed bright smile,
An exiled princess grieving for her realm,
A veiled courageous head to calm the mob.
Why leave the warm salon for rabid streets?
To show a General courage or disgrace?
Was martyrdom an outcome worth the chance
For fame and family in a fractured land?
How poignant was the manner of your death
A fragile flower in an armored pot,
Crushed by bigot bomb and army steel
And pressed within a ravaged nation’s book.
Who kills a woman in the name of God
For hope of virgins on a fleecy cloud?
Who keeps all women hiding in black robes
Beyond the shame of Satan’s apple eyes?
What hatred grows so great it must explode,
To mangle guilty, innocent and self.
If heaven comes by deeds you are not there,
If judged by faith you shine among the damned.
We Sons of Liberty remember days
When priest and king conspired in palace halls
To crush the rights of men to rule themselves;
But patriots died to break the tyrant's chains.
We've been through Dallas streets and Memphis nights
To take assassin blows on noble heads,
We know the grief of promises unkept
Yet kindle freedom’s flame on martyr graves.
You desperate millions crying to be free,
Remember well that veiled courageous head
And keep her vision fast within your sight
To build a land your children need not fear.
Escape the caves of darkness for a light
Beyond the bomb’s brief flash that blinds all sight,
Reject false prophets who would rule by fear,
And pass unfilled collection plates of hate.
Escape the feudal world of holy rule,
Close schools of hate and teach your children how
Free people fight with words by rules of law,
Spurn gun and jail and know their blessing’s true.
Frank Hartline
January 2008
