A request from a friend

Tomorrow, I'm headed to Washington, D.C., and will be there for a week. I'm going to spend several days focused on WHINSEC and lobbying and stuff like that.
Today, Tina Busch-Nema, my friend and fellow member of the SOA 16, asked me to share something with you. It's about the terrible effects on people of countries using nuclear weapons. I can't really add much to this, so here it is...
Dear Friends,
Fatemeh Keshavarz or known my most as Fati, is a woman who teaches at Wash U here in St. Louis. Fati is from Iran and is working tirelessly to prevent an attack on her homeland.
She wrote this poem and asked it be circulated far and wide. She wants to circulate it to let make a point...the dust of these bombs infects our souls...as well as our bodies.
Tina
Meet Keiko!
Twenty years ago, when we first moved to St. Louis, I met this lively graduate student named Keiko. After twenty odd years, it is hard to recall details beyond her round face framed by short shiny black hair.
But I remember the way she moved through the building with a combination of agility and grace, in bursts of short successive moves - much the way robins would explore a tree (without making noise or knocking anything down) .
A year after we had met, Keiko died – suddenly – of lung cancer. “I didn’t know Keiko smoked!” I said to the teary-eyed friend who brought the news of her death. “She didn’t,” he said rather hurriedly, and added after a silence, “She was born in Hiroshima.” Neither of us said much after that.
Keiko’s round face and shiny black hair have come back, often, these past few days. And every time, I have caught myself drafting a letter in my head, a letter I know I will not put in the
mail:
“Dear Senator Clinton!
I write with a personal request.
If we were careless enough to hand you the key that
opens the Oval Office
And with it as many war fronts across the globe as you
wish
Please do yourself a favor, throw it away and do not
look for it!
You may want to find out first
Why the idea of “obliterating” seventy million people
does not make you shudder
And if you have the time to pass through St. Louis,
Missouri,
Please stop by and meet Keiko Yamakawa
Her round face smiling from a hand-made picture frame
Ashes of Hiroshima in her lungs”
Fatemeh Keshavarz
Asheville, North Carolina
April 29, 2008