David Mendelsohn of Ontario, Canada, wrote the poem below, a poem about the 1993 famine in Sudan. This poem was first published almost thirty years ago under the headline "Can We Give Ourselves Up To God?" on page 3 of the June 4, 1993, edition of The United Methodist Review (a newspaper that was published every other week by the United Methodist Communication Council in Dallas, Texas).
From the air she seemed fertile --
Fertile and green and growing,
And abundant with life and water and flowing,
And flowing and winding,
And soothing and giving and pure . . .
And I thought she was the Mississippi --
The mighty Mississippi:
A mighty winding river --
A strong and mighty giver
Of life:
Feeding the people,
Feeding the poor . . .
But all below was death.
And skin on bones --
And flies on skin,
And flies on eyes,
And withered walking corpses,
And bloated starving children,
And faces without hope,
And eyes of blank despair,
Deep in this heart of darkness --
So black and dead:
This lifeless hell of Southern Sudan . . .
And I?
I live in a basement:
A small grey casement,
In a towering city
Of steel and concrete,
Of silver and gold --
Where men are bought,
And souls are sold.
And I have clothes,
And I have food;
And I have shelter from the cold . . .
And so I ask:
Can I give myself up to God?
I must.
You must.
We must --
Raise these children from the dust . . .
Nowadays in South Sudan there is a new front line of climate change after historic flooding. To read about that new front line and to watch a video report from David Muir of "ABC World News Tonight" about it, click here.
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