THIS IS WHERE WE ARE BORN (#3)
In order to fish we must paddle across the marshes and swamps
when the wind blows the sky clears
and the heart, mother
tells stories about the time before time
about her mother and the gigantic owls she was scared of as a child.
The bread rises.
The water in the well
is clearer than for many days.
The Myrmidons, mother says.
Palm oil, mother says
and points with a finger that looks like an arrow
a cross.
The bread rises. The Myrmidons.
It is our bread. We don’t call it sky, mother says,
we don’t call it sky.
The delta moves, it is our water
underground
rivers and lakes. The Master’s house full of Belgian coffins
and portraits of queens, mother says she works
with her shoes on, with her apron among plates
with drawings, English crockery, a table that belonged to
Napoleon the Third’s wife,
an angel, a plump, white child with wings.
In order to swim we must turn into fish
into shoals of fish
in order to paddle
we become oars, timber
water surface and algae.
Mother says the Master collects
sea shells, but we know only the river
not the ocean
not waves or sand.
Our forests are green, almost black.
Our diggers long-limbed young boys
with greyed pupils, almost blind
almost animals.
They bury their mothers
the dead horses
and horse carcasses, the rotting skin
on the bottom of the river where we swim
like children
like fish
like oil stains.
Mother does not raise her voice
but recites, mother's eyes turn white
in the evenings when the silence spreads
and the stories begin
the one about the Caliphate
the one about mortality
the one about prosperity
the one about poverty
that is not about money
the one about the poor who work on rigs.
Along the road walks the ghost of my father.
Mother tells
about the time when they met
mother says father was a sad but hard-working man,
before time
before the delta, before the roads were ploughed
before the rice was burnt
before the gums began to bleed
and the eyes darkened. Mother says father
your father, their father
mother says the sickness
vomit, headache. Mother says father’s eyes and skin
here, she says, pointing at us
who still breathe normally
we who have not yet begun to scratch the wounds
who still resemble children
but are not children.
And father is dead.
Father is a ghost.
Father haunts us with his darkness dangling
after him like a fish
like a wind
like a hand that is raised and lowered in the dark.
The bread rises, we drink water
our water, it is our cups we bring to our mouths.
The Myrmidons.
It is our earth we shovel over the bodies,
our tongues that grow still and dry
like leaves along the railway lines,
above the poles of the telegraph office
and the signs with letters and drawings
The Arrows look like fingers.
The Crosses look like fingers.
There is a whispering in the trees. In the afternoons we see the sun
go down, and the dead birds begin to sing. The bread rises,
we don’t call it sky
mother says.
We rely on mother
because father is dead and mother says there are problems, she teaches us
words like production, purification
process and compensation. When they slit your belly open,
when they make you climb trees
when they demand that you lower your eyes
there will be a smell of crude oil.