That Friday night, a slow moon rose, blood-orange,
huge, over the sea’s horizon. Trails of clouds
were silhouetted across its deserts
like black smoke. Next morning, a drear sea-light
filled the rented cottage in the dunes
by the shore. A heron was wading slowly,
purposefully along the water’s edge.
He had gone to that tiny, remote island
off the Atlantic coast, accessible
at low tide across a sand bar, to finish
his latest book: ‘Looking The Other Way –
Genocide In Rwanda’. He was working
on the index. He had reached Complicity.
Prompted by a text from a friend late
on Sunday he turned on the tv news –
saw pictures of that Saturday’s massacre:
edited images of the aftermath
of the murder of innocence, and real-time,
incriminating footage of armed men
oppressing distraught women and children,
taking hostages for ransom or slaughter.
The days then weeks that followed were lit
by the graphics of the after effects
of the bombardment, the deliberately
chosen response – a life for a life,
a death for a death, rubble for rubble.
And gaslit by hours of talking heads
oozing bombast, lies, and casuistry.
It was a time too illuminated
by the courage and humanity
of the living victims of loss and horror.
Each day he would walk along the shore
round the island until he could see
the range of mountains inland across the fields.
The peaks were increasingly hidden in shifting mists.
The hedgerows of hawthorn and traveller’s joy
edging the fields were turning to yellow.
He would think of the fire-bombing of Dresden,
of the razing of Lidice, of Stalingrad –
and of Goya’s painting of two giants
clubbing themselves to death as they sink
ever further into a bog, like some
danse macabre of self-destruction.
One day he suddenly thought of the books
in his study at home, a collection
of sixty years, and was overwhelmed
by their number, their seeming irrelevance.
He watched the progress of the moon as the month
waxed and waned: sometimes obfuscated
by clouds, or smoke, or dust; sometimes bright as
a ‘bomber’s moon’. The stars appeared. The sun rose
above the horizon. The sea ebbed, flowed.
And thousands, thousands of children were slaughtered.
By David Selzer