Poem For Malala Yousafzai

Full Text http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/the-full-text-malala-yousafzai-delivers-defiant-riposte-to-taliban-militants-with-speech-to-the-un-general-assembly-8706606.html

Malala addressed the U.N on her 16th Birthday yesterday, her speech was beautiful. Here's an extract.

"We believe in the strength and power of our words. Our words can change the whole world because we are all together, united for the cause of education. And if we want to achieve our goal, then let us empower ourselves with the weapon of knowledge and let us shield ourselves with unity and togetherness." 

"Let us wage a glorious struggle against illiteracy, poverty and terrorism, let us pick up our books and our pens, they are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world. Education is the only solution, education first"

Poem For Malala 

Imagine my death, 

every reminder of my assassination

would hurt the blood

in your ignorant hands.

I will make sound with all that blood -

noise the night, until the country

invents a new condition of weather, 

where clouds the shape of Pakistan

are not as high and out of reach 

as a girls education -

every woman under this sky will begin to rise -                      

my voice will shoot every bolt of my pain

to un-secret my death. 

When it rains it is the sound of my bones       

bursting. 

It is a loaded sky of grey, cold as your bullet in my face.

It is the dirt in the black ground growing teeth. 

It is re-learning that you took the life of books

and the life of me - a girl who just wanted school.

          

You should have kept the blood warm in my feet,

if you did not want me  to    carry   my     story

across the desert        the border      the ocean

as a book you cannot burn.