Dili November 1991

Dili November 1991

By Egas Alves

Today in my city the sky to be cloudy

To turn off in the view of the sunrise

The town apparently to be with sadness

What melancholy will appear to the people who are living there?

Today in my city all mothers kneeling

Crying with the hands open to heavens

"God, where my son?"

Only the blood to shed on the ground

In the graveyard Santa Cruz without the corpse.

Today in my city with blood and body

The young Timorese search the way to freedom

And so with blood and body the young Timorese

Writing to their brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers

Once more the story of East Timor.

They mothers watering the flowers with tear drops

To scatter to the corpse without a gravestone

Their bodies disappear from our side

But they name to be in the wholeheartedly people Timorese

Today ...

12 November 1991, in Dili East Timor



[This poem was written by an East Timorese newly arrived in Australia as part of his English language class.]

From GLW issue 189