Photo courtesy of Amalini de Sayrah

 

Why keep knocking at the front door

of that house? Let go. Go away. Go to sleep

 

and wake up refreshed. Build your own door.

Build your own house. Nobody can deny

 

what you gather with your hands, cement,

make solid. Nobody can deny democracy

 

at its root, individual choice and action,

although we know we are not atoms

 

flying about, that we live in communities

under laws that make the social contract.

 

Now is the time to tear it up, to start

again, to say we will no longer suffer

 

the mismanagement, indebtedness,

theft and punishment of its most

 

recent administrators, the ones

who would use the army and police

 

to silence our peaceful protest.

The Aragalaya will not be bullied

 

into submission.  We still need

food, petrol and medicine,

 

and we will keep building our house

on public land, on the country’s maidan.