It is better to
say 'I am suffering' than 'this landscape is ugly.'”
The Chinese poet said he suffered and I envied him for that, not for
his suffering but for the word itself.
The gap between suffering and our
words for it is like a
vertical trough in
the Ko'olau; even the rain can't fill it with enough light. Early
morning wind and birds conspire an ambient sound. Brssss,
Sangha would say.
Was he ever sick, his aunt asked, and I said no more than most kids.
The cousin who shared his
rounded face had orange hair
and carried a
cell phone. I caught a ride
on her motorcycle, zigzagging down a thin road between
densely packed thatched
houses. The village stood on
a point of land; up the
rutted road people kept thousands of ducks in pens. What's ugly is
not land but what it hosts: genocide, HIV, a brother gone to Thailand
and not heard from since, another whose face closed like
blinds on
our gaze. We nursed our
clouded glasses of tea; in
front, Sangha held a framed
photo of his dead mother; his
grandmother quietly placed her hand on his leg then pulled it back. We know there's been
a wedding and a funeral since. When asked if he'll return, Sangha
says he got to leave.
--Takeo
province, 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment