The Silent Chorus of Asia's Missing Daughters
The mourning sun struggled to shine
over the good earth
longing for uprooted seeds,
O-Lan’s second bamboo shoot
harvested far too soon.
The eighth page of
my American newspaper
casually mentions
Sixty Million
Missing,
as is our rage.
Silent choruses
of Asia's daughters
during this thirty-year long
monsoon of tears
cry out in unison:
Was gender our only crime,
or was it the cruelty of order?
(to form an even
more perfect union,
one child-no second chance,
second child-no first chance.)
Inhuman actuaries
compute the
fair market value of
rare Punjabi jewels as
the opportunity cost
of their ultimate dowries,
while surplus men pine.
O blind new world
proud of its
amniotic intelligence,
so unaware of the
consequences of
unnatural selection,
last night I dreamt
Heaven’s narrow gates
welcoming millions
scarcely born,
its vast expanse
unable to contain
our aggregate guilt,
the billions of us who
remain.
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