Letter to Rwanda

In 1994 I was ten.

I remember being at my grandmother’s, on the other side of the courtyard.

She kept waffles in a dresser, rolled up like cigars.

There was the set of Ludo pawns, whittled from wood and painted by my grandfather. My grandmother was cheating.

There was a clock and a wardrobe that seemed to have been made by very large humans.

There was a television in the coldest corner of the house. Bruno was talking about Rwanda.

For several weeks, Bruno Masure talked about Rwanda.

Here it was the mildest time of year, the time of lizards, of riding my bike till dusk, soon school would be out.

I hear “Kigali”. Bruno Masure is worried. Many people are dying. I don’t know Africa. I’m afraid of Kigali, of red eyes and black gums.

I met Boris in a lift. In Italy. We exchanged a glance, a glance three-stories long.

In 1994, Boris was a journalist. Boris had been fooled then he opened his eyes and his eyelids were burnt.

Now Boris travels the world and opens its eyes.

he’d seen the monster
the one who shares our dreams
beseeches our gods
eats at our table
loves those we love
and weeps our own tears
the monster within
same body, same soul

Boris exposed the monster in a gospel of sulphur.

I met Bruce. He served me black tea from a yellow box with a landscape of lakes and volcanoes. He told me Rwanda was beautiful and very green.

August-September 1994, I’m gorging on plums. I’m thinking of the colour of my new pencil case for school.

Bruce is in Rwanda.

he’s seen the monster
he’s seen the white bodies
a methodical line-up of skulls and shinbones
some are no bigger than a doll

Bruce dressed them in flesh and colours and painted them upright.

I’ve read and seen what memory has patiently exhumed from the genocide.

That genocide, the one seen live on TV.

The monster is identical twenty years later. Only it has a few million new teeth.

There are innocents who believe he has crossed the border.

They’re the worst, the innocents who don’t know that the monster lives under their roof and wears their clothes, that the monster roams their body.

I have known since I was ten that the world flares up a little more each day and that new rains will smother its embers.

I know that other children will be ten and other children will die when they’re ten.

From Connivences 4 (éditions de la Margeride, 2017).

Lady-flute’s cantilena

I want you to hold me close
In a chamber close to your heart
I want your breath to flow through me

You will be the mouth and I the voice
And together we’ll chant
As fauns begin to dance

Come, with the tips of your fingers
Obscure what inside of me
Gives light to the silence

I want to slip inside your male lips
To find myself captive
And know you are gifted

I’ll teach you to read
That other partition
That until dawn
Will see us falter

Provided you grant me
Your coming night

From Un autre monde que le mien (Éditions Bruno Doucey, 2025). Occitan title: Sansoina de la femna-flaüta.

In the palm of her hand

What if the greatest gift life could offer
Was to let us greet the child we once were
To stroke her shoulder and to hold her close?

What if the last face to greet our eyes
offered only the wonder of a looking glass
reflecting the mask of our youth and the brightness of what is yet to be?
What would we say to this child?
Would we grow less fearful of the dark when we hear her sing a lullaby
in her hesitant voice, reinventing words we’d forgotten?
Can we even name the day we truly ceased to be that child who loved riding whales
wondering why the Earth isn’t called Sea even though it’s covered in all that water?
Did we stop communing with the plants in our garden
or whispering to our pets
the sweet words that gave us comfort?

Is this the reason why the language to linger last in our memory is also our first?
To better welcome this child, her laughter and gesture when the warm palm of her hand, with infinite tenderness, comes to rest on our cold eyelids?

After the painting L’Aïeule by Uranie Colin-Libour.

2020

Canto VI

They came by sea in their small boats. They came with plaited beards and solemn eyes bearing news that a shepherd had stolen a queen. Ulysses joined them, weapons in hand, a smart helmet on his skull. But before setting off he made a pledge. May his soul be damned should he break his oath.

He says “return” she hears “departure”, he says “victory” she hears “loneliness”, he says “for ever” she answers “never”.

And so the old women take to wailing again.
Terrified, the dogs gnaw at their rumps.
She wraps herself in a shroud.

She

Give me a name, Ulysses

give me a name so that i can wait for you
i’ll be here, the mirror, there
and we’ll speak of you, i and the other in the mirror
i’ll join her there, a little slant, on the edge of a chair, the way birds do
the ache in my thigh keeps me from losing myself to that side of the mirror

in the morning i’ll wear my earrings
i may even wear them to bed should you surprise me in the night

but if i have no name how will i know which of us, her or me, is waiting?

Ulysses

Give you a name?

Give you a name when you dance in the dark with great hounds in empty streets?

Give you a name when you stroll to the river dressed for night in the glaring sun, spurning
the men who were doomed the moment they thought they possessed you?

I’ll offer you oranges
and to peel them a knife no bigger than a thumb
an ivory knife I’ll steal when the battle is over
a dead man’s gift to another woman
and you’ll be bound to think of her, of her cold sheets, of the hole in her pocket
traded for the knife

I’ll offer you blades of grass that cling to the soles of my feet
from shoots that grow there, where the bodies lie
standing tall as sentinels at the precise point their retreat ended

Canto VII

There was a man. There was a woman,
And after, within living memory, a myth was born.

The Tale begins on the first day of battle and follows the waterways of its return trajectory.

There will be other men and other stories.
Other tales to the memory of a man named Ulysses.

She

i am here, alone again
with this soft rain that insists on blending everything together
on finding harmony in this hateful landscape

Ulysses exits

the stage is deserted
the extras are consigned to the cellar, along with the set

the poet crosses this out…
what’s missing is a woman to wait for Ulysses
a woman, a dog
and men
to surround and to court her

It all seems chastened

the sun
void

i built a labyrinth for the sun
there’s a bull
no, not that one
a small rust-tinged bull, with eyes like marbles
he’s the sun, poor little blind beast

and if the sun should sing
the birds, their wings would burn to cinders

There are all manner of sorrows

water pouring from this damned basin
caresses ordained by the gesture
the perennial pleasure of warm water
letting yourself be captured
in the way that water catches the light
finding rapture in bubbles
even as the tears, the tears are falling
bubbles, warmth, creases on the back of my hand
all calling for a truce

here, now
a truce

but your name comes back to me
and i want to bury myself in this pool of water

i wear a bracelet on each ankle
you could say i do more or less as i please
no man, no name, no son
alone as i am, i am the queen

yes, that’s what he used to call me, Ulysses
that’s my lot
she’s sort of all me, the queen
the one whose turn it is to speak
she has a king
he’s often far from home, with his horses
no, not the little mountain horses
no, tall horses they took from the stonemasons
with massive jaws and thick necks to bear the weight of their heads

there it is
the walls are steep
dancing surrounds her, but she will not dance

there is no music, no voice other than mine
yes, i do have a mirror but i lied, i don’t want to see myself in it
i may turn it towards the sky
or take my leave one day
and prop it there, staring straight at the door

From In Search of a Face (White Pine Press, 2025), which received the Cliff Becker Prize. Originals in Occitan and French from En quête d’un visage (Éditions Bruno Doucey, 2017).