Do it in this clear-eyed light
now that you know that your back’s against
imponderable walls,
do it in the day-breaking light of
these times because you can no longer
retreat under rocks,
do it where the water washes
the shore that assuges your feet
where the sacred offerings of Ancestors lie
and the ground exudes this ethos – who we are,
whom they have denied that we be.
Just do it. And reclaim this space.
Or else the night falls unapologetically
the haze, so mystifyingly comforting now,
becomes a shroud, a nightmare impossible
to run from because your limbs turn to stone
as in a child’s bad dream – an inundating
fear of unexplainable motionlessness.
Do it in the soft lumière of this dawn
where we remove the passe-droit of our shoes
in reverence, and let memory return.
Do it like so much more than a prayer:
a whispering above the roar of breakers
is a whimper, a rolling-over, a surrender
of our story – these bones must be more
than fossils, these living shards more than
an ancient potter’s fingers on the past.
Do it while the clay’s still wet in our hands
or there will be nothing for the children.
Only a smudged memory of holocaust.