List the subject/occasion/ audience/tone of "Why I Could Not Accept Your Invitation" by Naomi Shihab Nye.


Why I Could Not Accept Your Invitation


Besides the fact that your event

is coming up in three weeks

on the other side of the world

and you just invited me now,

your fax contained the following phrases:

action-researched oriented initiative

regionally based evaluation vehicles

culture should impregnate all different sectors

consumption of cultural products

key flashpoints in thematic area.

Don’t get me wrong, I love what you are doing,

believing in art and culture,

there, in the country next to the country

my country has recently been devastating

in the name of democracy,

but that is not the language I live in

and so I cannot come.

I live in teaspoon, bucket, river, pain,

turtle sunning on a brick

Forgive me. Culture is everything

Right about now. But I cannot pretend

a scrap of investment in the language

that allows human beings to kill one another

systematically, abstractly, distantly.

The language wrapped around 37,000,

Or whatever the number today,

Dead and beautiful bodies thrown into hole

Without any tiny, reasonable goodbye.