Fourteen: Malala Yousufzai

Fourteen and with the heart of a lion,

fourteen, a girl with the tenacity of an army of women.

God by any name loves her over the viciousness of piety,

God will prefer her defiance of Muslim hypocrisy

and ignorant compliance - shrilly posing as a "model of advancement,"

looking only backwards - whereas she alone is her nation's enhancement.

In her schoolgirl form speaks the voice of our time,

she is the river itself over which the passing flotsam

of her coming or going, or of the Taliban's coming or going,

is carried out of sight to the ocean of unfolding.

We are in her bond, resounding on every breath

is a voice triumphant, victorious over the living death

of one more day with twisted norms in a twisted culture,

a clarion call to us: "Don't be the flotsam, be the river!"

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/newsmakers/books-pens-most-powerful-weapons-heroism-malala-yousafzai-165035081.html?vp=1