Friday, January 09, 2015

CREDO

by Rasma Haidri



“At least 12 were killed in an attack at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Four cartoonists are among the dead, including editor and cartoonist Stephane ‘Charb’ Charbonnier, seen here defiantly holding one of the magazine’s covers. The magazine was fire-bombed in 2011 for publishing a cartoon of Muhammad and is know for its provocative satire. The Guardian has live updates here of developing events.” --Ann Telnaes, editorial cartoonist for The Washington Post, 7 January 2015.


I believe in One Art
Father of Cartoon
Begotten of the Pen Almighty
Maker of heaven and earth
I believe in Drawings
Visible and Invisible
Born not made
Being of one Substance
The Ink, the Pen and the Lead
I believe that Art,
Giver of Life, Begotten of man
Came and dwelt among us
Suffered and was buried
So the multitudes would rise
Take up Arms of Pens,
Draw Cartoons a Thousandfold
In world without end.


Rasma Haidri grew up in Tennessee and now lives in the Norwegian arctic where she is a newspaper columnist, textbook writer and teacher. Her poems and essays have been widely published and are forthcoming in Songs for a Passbook Torch, an anthology of poems about Nelson Mandela and Veils, Halos and Shackles, an anthology about violence towards women.