My 88th Birthday
POETRY FORMAT, 26 Nov 2018
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service
13 Nov 2018
To be almost 90
And happy
With good health
Feels criminal
Amid Satanic happenings
Raising Images too dark
To be real
Children in Gaza
Are shot to death
Friday after Friday
By armed vampires
Khashoggi’s murder
An unspeakable crime
Yet no more than a problem
For hard men of power
Events so dark
And so numerous
Casting shadows
Will despair be our fate?
Is this truly our world?
Are we even meant to survive?
My hope– to live
Long enough to shout
An everlasting ‘No’
And may so affirming
Become my last word
Become my testament
Of hope for all beings
__________________________________________
Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, author, co-author or editor of 40 books, and a speaker and activist on world affairs. In 2008, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) appointed Falk to a six-year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.” Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies, and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. His most recent book is Achieving Human Rights (2009).
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 26 Nov 2018.
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