Why Do I Not Cry? by Axel Pinpin

Sir, why do you not cry?*
You have to release the tears,
for they could drift downstream
the ennui, the rage and anger,
the yearning.
In tears lie your salvation.

My tears have long dried out.
Now the blazing flames flow out through my once tearing eyes.
After all my pain and suffering are sparked by the thought
of faint cries of mothers driven from their lands,
robbed of their children, perhaps children robbed of their mothers;
or perhaps children stolen, away from the safety of their mother's wombs,
to have their corpses scattered
upon the land their mothers wish to protect.

Their cries, their tears, are enough.
It has already drowned this poem of mine.
Feel it in these mired words, these mired pages.
Now even tears of blood flow painfully,
when anger makes it flow, instead of despair

-Translated by Aris Remollino and Alexander Martin Remollino
2009

*Question to the poet by a French representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), in an interview conducted in December 2006 as part of an ICRC program for visiting and therapy for political prisoners

[Originally published in Tugmaang Matatabil: Selected Poems in Translation, Southern Voices Printing Press, 2009]