mea culpa: a monologue

Today I think this postcolonial stuff, subaltern studies and all, is just splitting hairs to the nth degree. Tomorrow I may think differently, who knows? But today, post-structuralism is a pain is a method for madness. And it's a way to cope with guilt. There is no way to write ourselves out of guilt but we write anyway because that's all we can do. Must....attempt...communicate, share your guilt or die. All the arguments I've read say the same thing in different ways, without even recognizing that that is what they say. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

My existence renders me personally responsible for how I react to genocide, to persecution and discrimination. I am complicit because I am related to you, dearly departed oppressed and voiceless one. I can talk about you. I can write about you. I can even conjure you up and talk to you in my imagination, my books, my academic arguments. But I cannot rescue or re-create you. I cannot relate to you. You cannot tell me when I'm wrong about you. It's like talking behind your back, you know. You died. I survive and must carry your memory on my back like a tortoise carries its home. And honour it in some way, although you are no longer around to perceive that honour and when I honour it of course I'm just honouring myself by showing everyone what a great person I am, loving your ashes so. You're my shell. Remembering you, or at least pretending to, protects me from guilt, you know? Since we can't talk to each other, I have to find a way for your absence to complete me. I'm sorry, man, it's the best I can do. You died. I have to survive.

So that's it, huh? Not going to rise from the ashes and kick me or anything? No? Tomorrow, maybe.

Morning, Morning Angel Mine

Four in the morning
you turn me over
to speak into me some new knowledge.

Today's lesson is about life more abundant
and sweet singing
about why we move so
to the kumina of the Congo
"All a we a one Bungo"

Why we sing so to the Yoruba of Brazil
Gilberto, Gil, Nascimento, jobim
riffing down the lips of a stone flower
wonder which notes register keener
wild woman crying or wild violins.

Mornings with you Cherubim I wake
to hear you whispering all the promises you make
when we are on the earth plane and awake.
Soft in the hours of nectar
you whisper to me of promises kept
and promises keeping.

They fall about us like angel feathers
swept with the lightest of brooms.
Airborne now are our promises
in this lit and sanctified room.

What they cannot see
is that their reality
smokes dimly at the periphery
of us. What we are about is
liquid jewels for wine

Carnelian star apples
ruby bird cherries
celebrations in a sealed space
sacred and divine.
Their striving horns
emit dull sounds and fall
as lusterless still lives,

What we are about
is outside of imagining.
Today's lesson is about
life more abundant and
sweet singing

Golden apples and
sweet cups brimming
spirit and rosemary wine

Old wine skins cast off
into the flow
of the regenerating
Rio Nuevo
upon your lips
the taste of new morning wine

Morning morning
Angel mine.

by Lorna Goodison

****

Because I have had enough of Andrew Marvell's overrated poetry in class.