Ten Pieces for Rwanda.

Ten Pieces for Rwanda


Rwanda #1

This woman's body is blistered with death.
Soon her swollen arms will break her bonds;
The heated water of her body will splay
The ground where she lies and bless it.
Her head lies five feet away from her body
Screaming silence. The dust of revolution
Chokes her mouth. Her eyes bleed sunlight.
Sweet death is the harvest of this land.
This woman is but one victim who ran
As far as she could to escape the machete
Which with one immaculate swing severed
Her body from its intangible soul.
Who in this village, seeing such a sight,
Dare speak, with a civilized tongue
Forbidding the earth to welcome another
Living being into corruption?

Rwanda #2

I have eaten the geography of meridians and longitudes
There is no north which will lead me to safety
To the place which gave birth to me.
The crust of snow has been sifted with blood
A white temperature locks my teeth
My throat is the fastest luge ever!
Speed melts the sizzling ice
Winners are duly cheered.
There is no generous way to arrive at success.

Rwanda #3

I have eaten the last of the evening's snow
A white temperature locks my teeth
My throat is a fast luge tunnel
The ribbon that marks the winner
Is lost in the celebration of my stomach.
There is no match for the darkness there;
Snowlight is a flood on space;
Speed melts the sizzling ice.

Rwanda #4

Four black men swing in the dancing air
They are connected by an electrical thread
An acrid smell tells me they are dead
Their spirits sing of a time
That was greenly sad and unfair
Theirs is a song willed to the wind.
Who can document their offense
Their human sin? Who among us
Can sing of joy with our feet bound,
Our hands tied behind our backs?

Rwanda #5

The trees look starved;
Their leaves are gone.
The youngest of the flowers
Lie strewn and dead in the roads.
The neighbors, who are left,
Take staggering breaths and
Continue to breath beneath
The dark burden of their eyelids.
There are no bright solutions.
Only the dark may be severed by lightening.
Its energy surpasses the true explanations,
How these times and angers knotted themselves
In the back and in the neck
Growing into incurable tumors.
The bread I bake is made of blood and earth;
Its taste is withered leaf and dry bark.

Rwanda #6

John Deere shovels bite into the ground
They unearth huge trenches
They lift large stacks of bodies
And plant them side by side.
The land is covered over,
Seeded with new grass and trees.
No one can repair the air.
This is a place of rest.
No one can repair the air.
The rain baptizes; silt weds rock.
A new balm is prescribed
For all the pains left behind.

Rwanda #7: Instant Replay

With easy malice one African severs another man's head.
The ground sprouts bodies like rotting potatoes.
There is no water here; the land is dry and begging.
The eyes are astonished continents away.
The heart trembles then stops; the machete has no blood
of its own. Where are the rain and snow that cleanse?

A body writhes in the dust; its head toils in the river.
The river laughs; the land has nothing to say.
I shall remember these deaths with praises and psalms;
I feel their spirits winding themselves around the roots
of trees. There will be no bountiful harvests this year.
I gather the instant replays of stalks and twigs and
empty things.

Rwanda #8

And he, who I thought was my neighbor, came with swift
and easy hate in his hands, cleft my head from my soul, as I
knelt in the dust of our homeland. What spite the land has
come to that it should so rage against human nature! Have we
not kicked enough stones together? Why has love turned the
air to such expense? Where are the waters of cooling pas-
sions? My bloated self is rooted in contagion. Ancient angers
spread in small rashes. Nothing can ease the interminable itch
which attacks the land. Poison seeps from an open boil. If you
try to lance it, it disappears from one section of the body and
reappears in another. Posion becomes the texture of the wind.
I was once rock, bark, earthen jar and moonlight. Now I am
fresh sun and rotting flesh. These antique angers which
bleonged to my neighbor and to his father are mine now by
death and default. Pain is the machete that bit into my life so
swift and clean it never tasted blood or stained itself. My
body pours itself into the mouth of the earth. It feels the thun-
der of hurrying feet wandering into a foreign darkness. The
wealth of the nation is silent; it offers no rescue. The pieties of
food and shelter are useless. The sun has left the land, the
water is fould with intestines. What strange white peace is it
which approaches on the wind rising as it must from the sea?

Rwanda #9

This salve of youthful blood
Balms the sores of the country.
Still she does not heal;
The wound is too great.
The pulse runs in halting breaths
Too hard to draw.
The trees weep their leaves;
Water washes over dry tubers.

The tender wood is exposed
To lice and vermin;
Grey worms exit the body.
The river gives an embrace
To the floating bodies.
Who among the dead
Can bury the dead?
The land has lost
Its sweet negotiations.
We turn the earth;
Nothing is there.
Slowly the land
Recedes into water.
There are no sacred prayers
Found in its folds
The sun, the last
Of our martyrs
Is dead.

Rwanda #10

The cranes have come;
A steam shovel bites
Into the natural ground.
Old earth is pushed aside,
It lies in large mounds
As if some gigantic ant
Had burrowed up toward light.
Random bushes, grass and a single
Stalk of corn begins to grow here
The men plant steel rods, girders
Cinder blocks, then cement floors.
They are making rooms
In the spacious air
For new tenants.
The girders are covered,
Wired and walled in
With hammered sound.
Inside there is a schedule,
Outside a deadline to meet.
The rain washes the earth
The silt flows away.
Someone will make passage here
Take flights like breaths
Of human motion.

Herbert Woodward Martin is Professor of English at the University of Dayton. He recently edited a new volume of uncollected works by Paul Laurence Dunbar titled In His Own Voice, (Ohio UP).