The Seed Keepers

Vandana Shiva, in Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge, (Boston: South End Press, 1997), writes, “I frequently draw inspiration from the Palestinian poem, ‘The Seed Keepers.’

Burn our land, burn our dreams

pour acid onto our songs cover with sawdust the blood of our massacred people muffle with your technology the screams of all that is free, wild and indigenous.

Destroy Destroy our grass and soil

raze to the ground every farm and every village our ancestors had built every tree, every home, every book, every law, and all the equity and harmony.

Flatten with your bombs every valley;

erase with your edits our past, our literature, our metaphor.

Denude the forests and the earth ’til no insect, no bird no word can find a place to hide. Do that and more. I do not fear your tyranny.

I do not despair ever for I guard one seed a little live seed that I shall safeguard and plant again. (p. 40-41)