How We Surrendered Our World
We saw him come from the grass
By our patch
We thought he was our dead father
Returned
When he stood in the stream
His skin peeled off
Like milk
But he didn’t stop to comfort us
As our hearts broke, with fear
And gratitude
And after he blew holes in us
With a stick
We thought he was a demon ancestor
Who would destroy us all
Our big men the tallest
Most reckless fighters
Wept and lowered their eyes
That’s how
We surrendered our world
To the dead.
NOTE: When the first white men appeared in the highlands of New Guinea the people there thought their dead ancestors’ spirits were returning, who were believed to be white. There are photographs of these events.
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