We Watched It Happen
The Decade We Died
I wrote the poem below a few years ago, at a time when the world already felt like it was coming apart.
Spoiler alert: things have not been getting better since then.
“Tiny ripples can become great waves, but only if we are willing to disturb the water”.
The poem speaks to the slow erosion of something fundamental in us - our compassion, our humanity, our willingness to see and care. It draws on events that have shaped the past decade: war, climate collapse, disease, displacement, and the quiet normalisation of suffering.
In the poem, refugees become a river, rejected by the sea.
Some may remember the shocking picture below of a two-year-old Alan Kurdi, who drowned alongside his mother and brother on 2 September 2015.
The picture sent shockwaves across the world more than ten years ago, yet since then there have been over 4,000 more reported deaths of child migrants alone (and over 44,000 migrant deaths in total).
These are not just numbers or statistics, they are people - mothers, fathers, sisters - who died searching for a humanity that was not there to save them.
The title refers not to physical death, but to the death of something less visible and more dangerous to lose.
It refers to our humanity, our compassion, our collective soul. The part of us that dies a little when we see things like this happening – when we see presidents inciting wars and billionaires raping children - and don’t speak up.
It’s that one little voice screaming desperately from within, urging us to do something about all the awful things going on in the world because we know - deep inside we really do know - that none of this is ok!
This poem is not an answer. It is a reminder.
Tiny ripples can become great waves, but only if we are willing to disturb the water.
The Decade We Died
It started with a rainbow,
A rainbow dressed in black,
Then we watched a river running
From the terror at its back.
We saw the sea reject it
For the water was too high
So the river turned to red
And we watched it slowly die.
We saw the devil rising
To his presidential throne.
The gates of Hell flung open,
Flames chilled us to the bone.
We saw disease destroy
So much that we held dear.
Beneath a thousand forests felled,
Irony hid a sneer.
We saw the rise to power
Of Yesterday’s defeat,
Another river turned to red,
The blood now at our feet.
We saw the fires, the floods, the storms -
‘Unnatural’ disasters -
Scars of sins that strip the world
Of Happily Ever Afters.
We saw creature after creature
Taken by extinction,
We thought we were immune
Through immutable distinction.
We saw the realisation dawn
As permafrost turned black,
Tomorrow there’ll be no rainbow
For there is no turning back.
By Lucie-Anne Rhodes