The Seed Keepers

I just finished a very informative book by Vandana Shiva called "Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge" and found this poem within it. She is a physicist, ecologist, and acivist who is well-versed on the implications of globalization on all living things--from complicated organisms like you and me to the very molecules that form life. The book is really interesting and this poem really says a lot to me. I researched the poem and discovered that it was written by a Palestinian in exile, originally from a town called Haifa which was taken in 1948.

The Seed Keepers
Fawaz Turki
(born 1940)

Burn our land
burn our dream
pour acid onto our songs
cover with sawdust
the blood of our massacred people
muffle with your technology
the screams of all that is free,
wild and indigenous.
Destroy,
destroy
our grass and soil
raze to the ground
every farm and every village
our ancestors had built,
every tree, every home
every book, every law
and all the equity and harmony.
Flatten with your bombs
every valley; erase with your edits
our past,
our literature; our metaphor.
Denude the forests
and the earth
till no insect,
no bird
no word
can find a place to hide.
Do that and more.
I do not fear your tryanny
I do not despair ever
for I guard one seed
a little live seed
and I shall safeguard
and plant again.