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for
Teresa Baburam
1
Wide open spaces
stun me.
i was born, tight
as a knot
in a country called hate
where words weave wounds
and it us war, endlessly,
on the hour.
2
There are no words
for emptiness.
Small birds puncture its skin
mercilessly.
Here the hand of man is on every field.
A cry comes up from the land.
In every field a crop, corn or soya.
There are no words
for a people
who have no home.
3
On Elm Street, South Dakota
the heat shaves the paintwork
from the timber houses,
thoughts fall like leaves
and settle in the dust.
Two squirrels eye me
mercilessly,
from above.
It is Sunday,
to the singing of the insects
and the greedy mosquitoes.
Once i had a soul
that sang from its tree in the heart of home.
Out here we are all swimming
for dry land
shipwrecked, like rats,
on the Plain.
4
Somehow this must be
our longing for a life
not yet
possible
the glory of the sunflower
this happiness that beats
everyone’s brains
into pulp
this stormlike silence.
Here now in the heart of hell:
this song of the Prairie.
5
America! must be a word
for something
struggling to wake
in the heart of
nowhere
to find yourself driving
without direction
and these highways stretch endlessly
neither inside nor out.
Oh, my soul,
there is not one road but many!
Not one dream here but a million!
Marching, marching endlessly
now all our longings
have
become
soundlessly,
silenced.
6
Leonard Peltier is still in prison.
i don’t hear anyone talking of it.
It seems to me the silence must be a great prison to us all.
Even the Great Plains have no room
to contain it.
We guard it at 65 miles an hour.
It seems to me this whole country
is a great prison of happiness
to its people.
It seems to me
only the poor people are dour
and distrustful
because they carry the secret of America’s happiness
like a great burden holding up the ‘free’ world.
Leonard Peltier must have committed crimes
against this happiness, I think.
i think, day after day
he must think,
“…none of us is getting out of this alive.”
i think endlessly in great engines
that carry me ruthlessly across
the prairie
how so much profit
can come from murder?
i think, surely, it should be past the time
when life unfolds
like on TV.
Later i thought,
it would be nice if someone talked about it,
weaving my way through the trailer-parks
and the children with their arms raised,
their mouths open
if suddenly a wind cut through the
impenetrable being of the corn!
If suddenly the people fell from their perches on
the edge of the Plain
if somehow the monetary system went bust
if the books refused to open any more
if the graves opened and all the dead could talk!
7
Listening to my self, between two continents,
with no nationality now that is not a lie,
it comes to me:
“Leonard Peltier in prison”
seems like a bitter word.
8
If only somehow a wind cut through the corn!
if somehow suddenly this woman
at the edge of the windscreen woke,
if it was no longer all just night
or hunger
or fear
then, love,
maybe
i would find myself home
the first ‘white’ man to recognise
the country of his birth
our blood worth more than
the price of a dollar
and this life without value?
A homeland for all in exile!
[…]
19
No matter where i am
i dream of the world to come
here there is no property
no title deed
to gnaw your bones into hunger
no house to unhome another with
nothing out of place that the
wind could destroy.
It’s not that i dream too much.
It’s more that, even after all this time,
i can still somehow feel
this ‘thing’ called
‘desire’
so that it’s only that here
so far away
two thousand miles up this uncharted river
of dust and debris
someone has put a fence
round me
someone is cutting my words
with wire!
My throat is choked with silence
everyone speaks in a strange
language
here in this first reservation town
when the car won’t go no more
this lump in my throat
is holding
my life in its hands
piteously,
like an infant.
20
We sleep,
my friend and i
beneath all the stars
where it is neither day nor night
in the land of our lovelessness
we sleep
wondering where the world
might be
when we wake up.
[…]
28
Wounded Knee.
All roads lead to this point,
a grave on a hill
eight tourists from New York
taking photographs.
i arrive a hundred and ten years
too late.
i do not know what to do
with the Irish girl’s tears
i have been entrusted with
they wrap round my own
but i am old
i am tired
as a man
i have forgotten how to weep
only as a child
could i have remembered
there is too much and
too little,
to grieve for.
At the bottom of the hill
an Indian asks five American dollars
for directions
for five dollars i’d need
the way out of here
for five dollars i’d need the answer
to a couple of questions.
He tells me his brother knows
many things
but i am my own brother
and i know little
in this world too:
”my brother is my purse.
My friend, my means for getting on.”
We are poor people
we have no brothers,
that’s capitalism.
Instead i think
these old people
do not like us
and how can i blame them?
i am new and shiny
and the roots of my life
feed on their dead
though i am not white nor black
just someone lost on the side of a road
also
it’s hard being without colour,
the humanness and less of it
hurts.
29
i thought then,
to be Irish
to be poor and Irish
is never to know where your dead lie buried
this world has become our graveyard
all its people are our brothers
we are ghosts
and the children of ghosts!
30
At Wounded Knee
it must be
the dying ends up easy.
It’s life that’s difficult.
The memory is no longer painful.
Only forgetfulness
this amnesia where we have forgotten
what it is,
this life!
Here is “the end of history” then.
It’s not glory nor greed,
to have travelled four thousand miles
two thousand of them in heat and dust
to sit numbed by the carelessness of history.
To win or lose
who gives a shit?
Still, in a corner of the graveyard
at Wounded Knee
a small child sleeps
a doll, half rabbit, half human,
stands sentry there
guarding her grave.
Oh, there must be a place,
a secret place,
where the almost
endless grief
of our losses
can find
a home.
A place
where we all
might belong. [… ]
Permission to republish portions of the poem and pictures of South Dakota kindly granted by author séamas carraher wretchedoftheearth@eircom.net
Séamas Carraher was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1956. He lives on the Ballyogan estate, in south County Dublin, Ireland, at present. Recent publications include poems in Bone Orchard Poetry, Istanbul Literary Review and Pemmican. Previously his work has been published in Left Curve (No. 13, 14 & 20), Compages, Poetry Ireland Review, and the Anthology of Irish Poetry.
