vanitas vanitate

 and so, carrying a $9.99 throwaway phone, texts and calls prepaid but still moaning abut my iPhone,  I came back to comfy hotel room, stuffed with music and dinner, to read this. I'm sharing it because it made me think, even in my overstuffed, overprivileged condition, and I hope it will make more of us think twice. Or three times. And thank you to the lovely and caring Rosalind, of Clothes, Cameras and Coffee, who put it out there.

Dhaka, April 24th

Buildings fall in other places,

Visible but out of sight.

Look away from dusted faces,

Fingers grey with rubble's graces, 

Fill your bags with cheap delight.

Primark earnings up a quarter:

Queue for t-shirts - two pounds each!

Never mind the ruptured mortar,

Families that lost a daughter.

Listen to the profit preach.

"Love a bargain," "Special prices, 

"Summer bags are hot, hot, hot!"

In Tasreen people burned; such crisis 

Commonplace where need entices,

 Those with names are fast forgot.

"One time order", "Random audit," 

These the words of Western gain. 

Broken lives? They can afford it, 

Mending where they once ignored it, 

Aid to bind the splintered pain.

Our flagship stores should stand half-mast: 

Commemorate the hands that sewed, 

The lives now crushed, left in the past, 

Five hundred lost to sate the fast 

Tempo fashion thinks we're owed.

But we are cracked who do not care 

To hear the price of what we wear.

Rosalind Jana 2013