Compassion’s Echo

Empathy…

Once a pulse in the public square,

now flickers behind screens,

 scrolling past suffering

as if pain were just another post to be forgotten by morning.

Nationalism dresses itself in pride,

 minorities are erased,

their stories rewritten by power.

The span of such cruelty seems borderless.

At Sea…

A ship is sealed with salt and silence,

seven hundred souls adrift,

 barred from shore,

sleeping in salt,

waiting for mercy that never comes.

 Children counting stars in place of rescue,

the sea a cradle of indifference.

Deserts…

Where thirst speaks louder than law,

a policy that renders compassion mute,

 plastic jugs of mercy banned by regulation,

 as if kindness were contraband.

Borders…

Rise like fists,

walls of blame,

flags waving not in welcome,

but in warning.

Forests…

Where the last snow leopards vanish

 under the weight of greed,

their pelts traded for prestige,

their eyes never seen again.

Jungles…

Elephants fall not from age,

but from bullets carved in currency.

The jungle mourns in silence,

its grief unphotographed.

Cities…

Echo with nationalism,

where compassion is called weakness and cruelty wears a suit.

The marginalized are made myth,

their stories rewritten by those who never listen.

In lecture halls,

empathy declines like stock prices,

 a 48% drop in feeling,

replaced by the rise of curated selfhood.

And somewhere…

In the data stream,

a child cries but the algorithm does not hear.

Let us hope…

We are not permanently becoming a species of

distance,

 wired,

walled,

and only watching

as far too many continue to forget how to feel.

And yet hope is still breathing…

As voices rise in the streets,

not in anger,

but in song for the forgotten.

A professor teaches empathy again,

not as theory,

but as practice.