“Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi: NLD has won election majority“-BBC
Someday we say,
a woman will rule
a woman who pins flowers in her hair,
and has perfect posture.
She will hold hope in her hands,
and play Pachelbel’s canon
even when held under house arrest.
There are no easy victories
in a country where men who march
with bayonets wear medals,
where fires bloom in streets,
and a capital six times New York’s size
springs up in secrecy–
a ghost town inhabited
only by the government who demanded it
“the seat of the king”
a gold pagoda
swept sidewalks
an almost vacant road
stretching to its center–
“death highway.”
Is it any wonder we place faith
in a woman who leaves no food on her plate
because her first English word was “waste”
a woman who went to Oxford but came back to Burma
to care for her dying mother?
Someday we say,
a woman will win,
and so we celebrate each Burmese voter
who wears red
each Burmese voter who chants
with purple-stained fingers,
each Burmese voter
who weaves through scores of soldiers
to stamp a ballot.