genocide

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.