Dear Aotearoa Don’t Weep – Poem on the New Zealand Massacre
Shaykh Musab Penfound writes an emotional and profound poem to Aotearoa (New Zealand) in the wake of the Christchurch massacre. 
Dear aotearoa don’t weep
Your trees speak of so much sadness but your sky is in you
And your people you lift
Celestial, connected, pure.
Don’t listen to the piercing screams of those that have forgotten how to speak
They’d forgotten long before
how to even be
and so their humanity lies severed, scouring your land which bleeds.
But you will heal,
as you have done before.
For your land and heavens are connected – the land of the long white cloud.
And this new call will be heard
once more, but this time
louder than ever before
In your silent beauty
from you’re heavenly shores,
and your mountains tall
and your green hills
and your shy face.
Dear aotearoa don’t weep
Your mana runs too deep,
and I know this is why you cry so peacefully,
But the waves ahead must witness your face held up high,
to see your humble maninimity,
and the eternal, shaking, moving, waking strength
in your quiet peace.
Keep the peace,
so those that can still see, behold your face and learn to retrace
the steps through your hills,
back to their humanity.
A severed people, that are deaf
to your voice
should not silence what you speak. Sing on and sing like never before – as you always have
and as only you know how.
The green stone bled too on that day, and I wonder if you still have tears left to weep.
Please don’t run dry.
Now is the time for your clemency, now is the time for your rains to revive
and quench the souls that have bled dry,
so their sacrifice will bring your soil back to life.
You are alive.
You are more living
than so many that claim to be,
and because of this
your heart feels such pain.
Some may suppose your outpost
on the edge of the globe
is too far away to pay attention too;
a busied peoples
with no time nor space
to reflect in themselves,
let alone their world.
But your cradling,
by the Hand that holds you
veils eyes that cannot see
and keeps your innocent beauty.
Dear aotearoa don’t weep,
we feel your pain and our tears flow from and back unto the same streams,
you know what must be done
so uphold your mana and keep it real.
And the one who ascended beyond the seven skies,
(upon him prayers and eternal peace),
to bring down knowledges for hearts that can see
from his Lord and the Lord of the Land of the Long White Cloud,
and the world and the stars and the planets and hills,
rivers and streams,
The One, The Unique –
we ask upon you be serenity, tranquility, light, strength, guidance and peace.
