Poems: For the Protection of the Children by poet Éilis Niamh
For the Protection of the Children
by Éilis Niamh
Ask a child’s silence to speak
And you will learn truths you’ve never wanted to know.
When will it be time to raise our voices from the dead,
When will it be time to break our silence?
Victims are defined by spaces, behind closed doors.
I survived—formed bubbles under my skin
To trap the pain.
But one day they burst,
And when they did, acid rain
Poured over whole villages,
Turning their sands red.
There is no scissor-curled rainbow for our stories—only blackness,
When will it be time—boom, boom, boom,
Black echoes in an empty room.
We seal up the places where we’ve been marked
By hands like barnacles, wounded<
Against the tide’s rushing out like breath.
So I try to understand how I could have been
Shaken by a nanny who left me blind
An infant no stranger to death.
Aching to be found.
We lock pieces of ourselves in the past
Afraid of our own shadows,
When it’s the adults that hurt us
Who are the monsters of their own closets.
When will we shatter the hourglass of secret time?
How do we mend those childhoods broken
By parents who are themselves approaching darkness
Encroaching on long dreamless nights?
No wonder many do not speak out
Almost killed for our crying
Those who should protect and care for us
Cut us off from ourselves with the skill of a surgeon.
Rise up out of ash, left by the light we were born with
The tears shed then.
Our only hope for oasis
In the desert of the deserted.
Sound is red and raw, who counts the wounded?
The house of intelligible action
Lies, in shambles.
Truth keens across the chasms that are made
Truth keens, keys bleed,
Screams listen,
Silence shrieks in opened doorways.
How do gods determine when justice has been paid?
The bean sidhe will not rest tonight,
Nor will lurking shape-shifters with the beady eyes that glisten.
How dare anyone break a child.
Who among us dare speak a name?
None in this world or the next will claim you:
To harm a child is to will yourself a slave.
You who use and abuse the least of us,
You sign the warrant of your own exile.
Trapped inside your skin, no kin or kind,
Separate beyond ken, your prison is self made.
The time has come to break the silence,
The time has come to raise our voices from the dead,
To seek to put an end to this unconscionable violence,
Until our seventh generation knows nothing of such pain.
The Match- Stick Girl’s Fire
Elish Niamh
Silver eyes scan the road at twilight,
Tracking purple fog.
Flashlight eyes, cold as flint stone,
Their spark a smoldering of embers
Red dark circles under her eyes,
Imprints of old anger left behind.
Without a sound,
Match sticks strike.
Match-stick girl, cold and alone,
Do not douse your fire with tears.
Ash-child run,
Leap lightly, flicker like a dancing flame,
Burn away the should and could haves that leave their dingy sheen,
Bleach the strife-stains to golden, turquoise, sylvan green.
Shining girl put match sticks down,
Hair singed black, now auburn once more,
Whittle futures with the sharp edge of the present,
That lamp behind the map of yourself, turn the switch.
Watch your space from inside out take shape,
Definite, solid, the topography of relief.
Then firefly girl, find you rising
Rise and rise, and open your eyes,
Fire bird’s child, glow as the night infused with dawn, from near to far,
Radiant, like a wild and silent star, you are.
“Éilis Niamh suggests that, once you have read her poetry, that you listen to this song by SJ Tucker called “Firebird’s Child”. This song was inspired by a character from Catherynne M. Valente’s fantasy novel: Orphan’s Tales – In the Cities of Coin and Spice,Solace. Available to listen to and download here
http://music.sjtucker.com/
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