The Task
Joy, for many,
it is made up
of the simple wonders of this life.
Sometimes we do not know it,
and it’s only at the end
we can recall
the feeling
of a tiny hand in ours:
cherubic face upturned,
wide-eyed with trust,
as we remind a young one
where to cross
the road,
their t’s,
a stitch they dropped,
their plastic knitting needles,
fingers, when they tell a fib,
and oh,
their tiny hearts
(which one day
we all know will break
over somebody
or some thing
that matters most).
The simple wonders of this life:
oh, innocence,
and, women
walking arm in arm
on quiet dusk-descended streets,
in safety:
laughter singing sisterhood,
Delightful in their whimsy.
Stunning in their calm ferocity.
At ease, and glorious
in casual and unthinking freedom.
Joy is the tiny wonders of this life,
bequeathed so readily to some:
a meal with friends;
shelter on icy nights;
family together;
dignity and hearth;
a tender body,
loving unconditionally when winter falls.
The space and strength to say:
this life is mine,
this right is mine,
this body’s mine,
this choice is mine,
this thought is mine,
and mine alone.
The simple wonders of this life,
and of these rights:
profound-unearned.
Intrinsic and inalienable.
Not to be sold,
or spent,
or spared.
Not to be spat at,
spurned or savaged.
That’s the task.
That is the task:
to light up
the darkened corners
where these joys have been denied.
To strike the match
that lights the lamp.
And heavens, what an ask:
to flood with brightness,
and to search the shadows
where the worst of our humanity has gathered.
To square up against
the sure-unspeakable, and say:
Enough!
This can not be what we’re made of.
This can not be what we sleep on.
This can not be what we let to breed,
and rot, and fester.
Oh, the horrors
found marauding in the margins
where the many do not tread.
That is the task:
to lay a hand on trauma’s shoulder,
turn it round, and
look it in the eye.
To say:
this must be brought justice:
we are searching,
we are watching.
We will find you –
when we find you,
we will never look away.
To acknowledge
that there walk amongst us reapers:
scythes-at-ready,
riding on the horse of war and mayhem,
slaying all that we hold dear.
Sniffing the air
for scent
of those so vulnerable
they cannot – dare not –
raise:
their fists to fight,
their voices-loud,
objection,
international alarm.
Yes, this is what was realised
that Summer, there,
in the city of seven hills.
Oh, this is
what was born,
in Rome,
at the conception
of the International Criminal Court.
A vow, by hand of nations,
resolute-united,
saying:
we will chase the shadows
to the round, unending edges
of this aching earth.
No matter famine, war or fire,
fall-of-state or flood.
No matter dissidence
or disobedience,
or tragedy, or ruin.
Life itself
is sacred.
There are acts
which chill the blood.
And we will, together,
will, we swear,
protect those folks
the greatest darkness
finds.
The Mandate
Some say the law
ought not to bend.
That it should be a neutral,
certain thing.
But there are reasons
judgement and interpretation
are bequeathed
to human
– humane –
hearts, and heads.
Enter women, in coalition:
women, from the wings
of all the world,
who raised the plight
of territories
from the Balkans, to Rwanda.
From fields of conflict,
and beyond.
These women urged the court
to recognise that category of crimes
which, by the horror of their calculation,
target women
– target women, and their daughters
by the tent there, playing catch;
target women, and the sleeping children,
strapped to buckling backs;
target women, and their cheeky nephews,
dirt-drawing twig-in-hand;
target women, and the crawling babes, look,
right by their feet,
and the crimes which target
those whom gender,
(in the minds
of misogynistic men
and their supporters),
make
as vulnerable
as these.
There are some crimes
which, by design,
so make of man
the enemy of all mankind.
So the sisterhood
walked the corridors of power:
lobbied, whispered, woke
and wrangled
in the halls of Rome.
The sisterhood
stole little sleep,
and guided by the hand
of some other-worldly strength,
– and bleary-eyed,
and sure of heart,
worked tirelessly
to see the statute recognise
the folk the greatest horrors
always find.
Whatever you do to the least of my sisters.
Every woman is a sister of mine.
And where war walks,
its bed-friend torture lounges,
to test the very limits
of what a broken body
can bear.
For those who gender makes a mark of
when the world forgets to watch,
for them,
the women guarding the statute of Rome,
they coalesced, they did their best
to weave through law
an equal hand.
To see that women always walk the halls,
and sit the benches:
see that there is always pause
to think of what it means
to be a woman in this world.
And to encourage those there judging
to bring to table, and to thinking,
all their living’s taught them
(and perhaps the very things their living’s
taught them are unimportant).
And oh, they were at pains to see
that academic theorisation
would not prove the enemy
of just interpretation.
And so it was the court,
there writ through treaty,
realised, and recognised
and ratified
a place,
the space,
for Feminist
consideration.
When, much later,
warm, just printed from the press,
the thing was set to paper,
they had achieved
not all their aims
(and many, true, lamented
that the hand of status quo
stripped back the goals
of progress).
But, still,
that they so tried,
and would not give in,
that they believed,
that was enough
to imbed
a gender mandate
in the ICC.
When all was said and done,
and when dawn broke in Rome,
there bled a sunset, peach and golden,
flecked with dappled rose,
that faded out
into the morning blue.
A glimmer of hope
that change would come.
Something had shifted,
everyone knew.
The Measure
When the stench of terror
still hangs in the air,
and the slain
are yet to be given their rites;
when the shelling has stopped,
but the copters still whir
in near, not distant, memory.
When children crawl, shaking,
from out of their cupboards,
eyes terror-wide,
and darting.
When word finally spreads
that it’s safe on the ground
and the task begins,
of searching.
When mourning comes,
and the wailing continues;
with the damage surveyed,
and the losses inventoried.
When the shock sets in,
and the shaking starts,
and husbands crawl forward
to cradle their wives.
What, the measure of justice, then:
what, the measure of success.
What of the vow of ’98:
the united hands
which would drive back hatred
and brutality; inhumanity, and fear.
What of a court built to raise survivors
– to raise their stories to the sky:
their brave whispers
leading the justice cry.
Built to give pause
for interpreters to speak,
supports at the ready,
and ready to hear
the facts, unfettered,
and ferocious,
– ferocious, in their telling.
Built on the edge
of the northern sea,
deep in The Hague,
in the City of Peace:
Saltwater to truth.
An oceanic breeze.
Oh, let the light in
let the light in,
to dance through darkened halls.
To pirouette and tumble,
and to search out every shadow:
refracting,
and reflecting,
and unfiltered,
and a-glow.
Nominations of brilliant women,
were brought to the bench:
in numbers justice
and her sisters, favoured.
Women of all axes
persuasion, and thought:
there were some triumphs, after all.
But in creeped the corners
of status quo.
Unprecedent thrived,
and unwieldy process:
Expertise not decreed
a matter of course,
or consultancy diverse
and broad.
Certain crimes
weren’t recognised
as particular, in their horror:
the plight of girl soldiers,
and their bodies as tools,
and their freedom denied,
and their labour subsumed,
and commanders well-shielded
by the chain of command,
and bodies, forced-bared
had their justice denied,
and they dismissed crimes designed
to de-masculinise,
and desexualise boys, and men.
And the experts were challenged,
and testimony decried,
and stigma stayed tongues,
and the states closed their eyes.
The corners of status quo crept in,
to restrict the justice there could have been
if what happened in Rome
hadn’t stayed in Rome,
and the mandate
was followed through –
and the court stood proud,
and bared all teeth,
to do
what it was born
to do.
The Map
What use the pen,
if not to protect.
What remedy ink,
if not a salve,
and what use reason,
if not to reason well.
What of a mandate for reform
without the courage to reform,
What becomes of a revolution
that doubts itself.
Well, now takes hold,
across the globe,
an epic reimagining:
a movement, whispering
across the wide-deep ocean.
A radical unpicking
of the neat, and patriarchal stitch
Imbedded in the fabric
of unwieldy man-made law.
For what wonder critique,
if condemnation withheld:
and judgements untouchable-revered.
And so, the many pens
of Feminist thought,
in deep and honest contemplation,
bleed ink for the judgements
that there might have been:
if bravery,
and courage
and equality
and reform
had turned the corner of The Hague
and stared down, proper, face-to-face,
the casual-unthinking bias
of international criminal law.
Law made by men,
and made for men,
which makes of men
the perfect injured;
makes of men, defendants,
judges, sentencers, and all.
For some, the law’s lean
cannot be unwritten
(through process, judge
or survivor’s hearing),
for at its foundation there is rot,
and colonial conquer, and imposition.
But critique will cartograph the map:
myriad voices, in good faith and fact.
Let another scholar now spark their lamp,
and unwrite into the night.
And in the darkness, there, it flickers:
the hope of a thousand small lights.
As another,
and another,
and another,
unwrites,
and the harmony
of choral-collective
takes flight.
And Feminist scholars
of all genders and creeds
light up the darkened corners
where world justice has been denied.
To strike the match
that glows the lamp.
And heavens, what an ask.
Oh, change.
Oh, women
– and their allies –
writing desk by desk
on quiet dusk-descending nights,
in starts, with distant gunfire,
tired, resolute, or charged,
their labour singing sisterhood,
at ease, and glorious,
in sure, and fierce, and thinking
freedom.
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