“That until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned; that until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation; that until the colour of a man's skin is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes; that until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race; that until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained.” — Haile Selassie
Standing like the ancient poet, watching the clarity fill with vague, listening for the falconer, wondering when the gyre will widen or why it will, I shun the history of words. These thoughts so old they’ve stamped themselves as platitudes. This lurch so new its suddenness has staggered me from the surety of my wide-legged gait, tipped me slow-thighed into a dalliance with doom. Have they won? The worst, I mean? Are we on that darkling plain? Encountering fear within a handful of dust? Is the third who walks beside us visible at last?
Amandine. Delphine. My gemstone girls. Unfurl the red, gold, and green. Sing of Haile Selassie and dance with Marley’s ghost. Unleash the burning spear, let it set alight the world, whose boundless reservoirs of tears won’t even suffice.
What impediments remain for the unfathomable?
“But there are things which you have said to me which I do not like. They are not sweet like sugar but bitter like gourds. You said that you wanted to put us upon a reservation, to build us houses and make us medicine lodges. I do not want them. I was born upon the prairie, where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no enclosures and everything drew a free breath. I want to die there and not within walls.” — Ten Bears, of the Yamparika Comanches.
Do we yet wish to wish these things? The atrocities have returned in hordes and taken on human form. The lies of the elder skies have come as burnt ocher veils of choking ash. The children are betrayed. The great seas boil.
Make my eyes unsee, excavate my tongue, and lance my ears with spikes; rend my garments then my limbs. But first obstruct all exits and compel me to be witness to this endgame, this dark unholy codicil—me, the last player on the stage when even the audience has exhaled its ghost into the great dome, and I alone am desiccated, woebegone, phantom-swollen with the stillbirth of this calamity, the dreadful pitiful scale of this crime.
“Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.”
Blood a hot torrent down my aching throat, I try yet cannot speak my final words. I will them to issue from the ruin of my gorge, but my ebbing wits, shorting and buzzing, only think them, sheer diaphanous wings buoyed by the last silken breath of a mind already passed:
“Shantih shantih shantih…”
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[Image credit: © Todd Hido]