EDITOR’S CHOICE AWARD
By Pauline Peters
I.
Without skin they came,
killing as they walked,
and we could not see ourselves
inside their eyes.
No one else was a person.
Not the wild creatures,
banyamo nei zamba,
not the million trees,
no limba, no wenge, no agba, no us.
They used their broken language
to tell us what to do
and we could not protest,
they were killing us so easily.
Death was casual, death was everyday.
The earth we walk upon was turned inside out,
her belly and entrails sold for riches.
I am telling you the truth.
Everyone fled. Nkoba with her slow shell,
graceful mondonga of the long neck,
nkoi dark and sleek, even mokomboso
our always grandfather.
Nzoku with her waving trunk
lost her lumbering dignity.
She was put to work hauling
the bodies of killed trees
and providing transportation
for the skinless.
I am telling you the truth.
We were put to work
inside the body of the earth
making deep, deep, and deeper wounds.
And we mourned.
We lost not only family,
but our sun, our story, our names.
Indeed, we lost the very sky.
Kokunda means to bury,
kokufa means to die.
II.
Our surprise was utter.
That they should be so black
and also speak, seemed to us
to be beyond all reason.
The words in their unholy language, however,
sounded all alike, a result likely
of their not being able
to fully comprehend the world.
We approached those whose skin
was not quite too near to pitch,
whose hair was not so dense and woolly,
those who could not so easily disappear
into the crevices of the night.
These we could imagine closer to human
and safe enough to serve inside our houses.
Fairer as they were we would not be in danger
of falling into the endless
darkness of their being.
Of the blacker there was some talk
of taming or training
so that they, too, could live among us.
But as soon as the words
rode out on our breath,
as soon as the thought was born,
we saw the deep and absolute
absurdity of it:
they could not be schooled,
they could not be trained,
they could not ever live among us.
Their blackness was a mark
of all that was incomprehensible,
their blackness was a mockery
of all that was Christian and true,
their blackness was the mark
of chaos.