The Witchdoctor’s Wife Looks towards the New World
In the distance the sea crawls back and forth,
back and forth a moth flies against the screen,
against the screen where her heart is,
where her eyes adjust there is a faint light,
there is a duty to give birth to the dead,
to open mouths, quickly stripping the sea
of its African goods, of its Asian cargoes.
In the background the witchdoctor’s wife watched.
Life here rests on the shore of the unknown.
The trees are as numerous as the stars,
the rivers, the slow trek of a tiger tracking
a wonderful band of migrating monkeys,
the stubborn wing-beats of bird – all push in
through an open window of memory.
In the hold of memory events packed
together so tightly are stories lost.
Restless she sleeps and lives in a language
having no more feeling for the lucky ones
taken to the New World, taken in exchange.
History, ashamed at its silence, feels
that, with each generation, the distant
turns cautiously into the close-up.
Page(s) 40
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