Sabina Carlson's poem Vigil for Darfur

At the Get on the Bus speakers' panel on Friday, high school senior Sabina Carlson from West Windor-Plainsboro High School North in Plainsboro, New Jersey gave a rousing speech about Darfur and recited this poem, which she'd written, to the crowd.

Vigil for Darfur

by Sabina Roan Carlson

Hold up your candle if you are an angel.
Hold up your candle if the light of hope
dances and curls about your spine
like the breath of light
about the whick.

Or blow out your candle if you believe
that when
these flames flicker out
we will forget
the faces we now see before us:
the faces
of the hopeful,
and the memory of the abused.

Hold up your candle
if the people standing along side you
have become your wings,
and that
side by side
we fly
to a better place and time.

Hold up your candle if you know that sound does not travel
through air and wires but rather through the chords
of our hearts and that we will never
be able to claim
that we could not hear
a single cry
because a deafening ocean
stood between us.

Hold up your candle if you remember
how the world forgot 800
thousand Rwandans,
hold up your candle if you have a hole
burnt into your heart
by the Shoah, the Great Fire,
the Holocaust
and hold up your candle if you can still see
the smoke
and taste the ashes.

Hold up your candle
if you know
that tears
only feed
that fire.

And hold up your candle
if you refuse to let the world
sob itself to sleep, waiting for a wish,
because we did not listen to them,
because we did not burn with them,
because we did not tell them
“I am
going
to save you.
Here,
I am your miracle.”

For who
dares to say that miracles are simply
the dusted spines
of Bibles?

Friends, look
at the crying wings you stand
side by side with, listen to the heavenly
psalms of hope and hurt, feel your heart
rise
through the halo above your head
to join with a hundred thousand others
who will heal
this world.

Hold up your candle
if you
are an angel.

For who says that peace is impossible?
Who ever said that only angels are capable of miracles?
And who
ever said
that we
are not angels?