I have been through these streets before
The streets of misery, pain and woe
It is Fate, says my brother Joe
Controlled by the Gods we know
Gods have been gone for long
Leaving us with the right and wrong
Some of us play the God's role
Life on earth they try to control
To stop the rain and make it shine
To control your very life and mine
Justice is the right of the might
Holds true every day and night
A child abandoned, woman raped
They are weak and that's their fate
Fate, destiny or what so ever
The women always deserve better
A daughter, a sister, a mother
How anyone sane could hurt her?
Why do we fail to react and respond?
When a crime goes unpunished…
Morality, Ethics and Principles
Vanished with all the Values
This street is much too familiar
There is the woman at the corner
Waiting for the rich customer
We made a whore out of a daughter
When born, she was a daughter
Life has been too cruel to her
She sells, to feed her daughter
Though a whore, she is a mother
The shameless man tries to buy
A night of pleasure and paradise
But this world calls her the sinner
As he goes unsatisfied, to another
Ah, I have been here before
Seen the man go home on all four
Losing every step of his life
As he beats up his poor wife
The kids smoke and do dope
Burn their lives out of hope
A young man loses his life
He was stabbed from behind
Why do we let this go on?
Why do we fail to respond?
We always blame the fate
And Gods we do create
To be used from time to time
To justify every little crime
Poets, the men and women of words
Who say a great deal with their verse
There is so much more to this life
Than keeping the meter and the rhyme
People, good or bad, speak in words
It is mere words that change the world
Krishna, Jesus and Buddha
Gandhi, Lincoln and Mandela
Martin Luther King had a dream
Their words are always free
Good people with good words
They dreamed of a better world
We fail them every day and night
As we stay mute to every crime
As an impotent world goes gay
Or queer is the way to stay
Dogmas and ideologies explain
Why this life goes in vain
We fail to act when we should
Blame the fate whenever we could
A world that has lost its shame
As I walk through this street again.
The 2004 Sydney Peace Prize lecture delivered by Arundhati Roy, at the Seymour Theatre Centre, University of Sydney.
Peace & The New Corporate Liberation Theology
It's official now. The Sydney Peace Foundation is neck deep in the business of gambling and calculated risk. Last year, very courageously, it chose Dr Hanan Ashrawi of Palestine for the Sydney Peace Prize. And, as if that were not enough, this year - of all the people in the world - it goes and chooses me!
However I'd like to make a complaint. My sources inform me that Dr Ashrawi had a picket all to herself. This is discriminatory. I demand equal treatment for all Peace Prizees. May I formally request the Foundation to organize a picket against me after the lecture? From what I've heard, it shouldn't be hard to organize. If this is insufficient notice, then tomorrow will suit me just as well.
When this year's Sydney Peace Prize was announced, I was subjected to some pretty arch rema...
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