Poetry: Ashraf AboArafe
What is unfolding
is not what is spoken aloud,
but what hegemony does
when it fears
being outrun by time.
America
defends no order,
only its seat at the summit.
It raises the banner of values
while concealing behind it
a market
that recognizes
no partners.
It is the same power
that tested its might
on human bodies,
that struck humanity
with the atom
without a tremor.
In Hiroshima
the shadow evaporated,
and in Nagasaki
the world learned
that knowledge,
when inhabited by hegemony,
turns into a crime.
And still,
there was no apology—
only fire inherited
and renamed
deterrence.
China
does not invade;
it returns.
It gathers its geography
from the patience of history,
and walks
without asking
for a certificate of good conduct
from those who crowned themselves
guardians of the world.
Taiwan
is not a Chinese wound,
but an instrument of tension—
a domestic matter
turned into barricades
to delay ascent
and prolong the life
of a crumbling summit.
Venezuela,
on the other hand,
is the complete victim.
Its oil
is its sentence,
its independence
its declared crime.
It is punished
for refusing to buy
permission to decide,
for refusing allegiance
to the market.
Blackmail
here is a system,
sanctions a language,
and hunger
a method of persuasion.
The world
demands discipline from China,
yet remains silent
about the history of an eagle
that tested every form of power
except mercy.
There is no danger
in the rise of a power;
the danger lies
in a power
that refuses
to step aside
for humanity.
Either the world learns
that plurality
is justice,
or history will write
that hegemony
burned the planet
while claiming
to protect it.
