RIO TINTO
We cannot enter the Roman graveyard:
the gates are padlocked and chained
so we press our faces to the wire,
squint at the skewed angles of mossed stones,
the departed minions of enterprise and empire.
Behind us the mines, where pulleys and sidings
punctuate strata of centuries-old endeavour.
Rock and mineral are bared in russets and ochres
too raw for peopled places. Their cratered wounds
fill with water so deep you could drown there.
Today is Sunday. In the high, hushed
absence of trucks to rumble up the hill,
we try to hear beneath the wind,
listen for the sound of stone,
touch the injured past in its fissured heat.
THE VERY WORLD
Ahmed Catrada never told if he got sick
on the boat to Robben Island,
or if he’d found his sea-legs by the time
he left eighteen years later.
He spoke of the absence of children.
The need for a child’s voice so acute
there were days his eyes stung
with the ache to hear a baby cry.
When finally a little girl climbed into his lap
he could not speak, but closed his eyes
as the wave of lost years broke over him
and he fought for breath,
her spindly arms around his neck
a lifebuouy and a noose of trust.
We cannot enter the Roman graveyard:
the gates are padlocked and chained
so we press our faces to the wire,
squint at the skewed angles of mossed stones,
the departed minions of enterprise and empire.
Behind us the mines, where pulleys and sidings
punctuate strata of centuries-old endeavour.
Rock and mineral are bared in russets and ochres
too raw for peopled places. Their cratered wounds
fill with water so deep you could drown there.
Today is Sunday. In the high, hushed
absence of trucks to rumble up the hill,
we try to hear beneath the wind,
listen for the sound of stone,
touch the injured past in its fissured heat.
THE VERY WORLD
Ahmed Catrada never told if he got sick
on the boat to Robben Island,
or if he’d found his sea-legs by the time
he left eighteen years later.
He spoke of the absence of children.
The need for a child’s voice so acute
there were days his eyes stung
with the ache to hear a baby cry.
When finally a little girl climbed into his lap
he could not speak, but closed his eyes
as the wave of lost years broke over him
and he fought for breath,
her spindly arms around his neck
a lifebuouy and a noose of trust.
Lorna Shaughnessy