Arts for the 21st Century

Lines at Cas-En-Bas

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.