Today is Remembrance Day, 11 November. As a small child we wore stiff red poppies made of crepe and read stories about poppies blowing in Flanders fields. Then I grew up and read Wilfred Owen.
It is also the date, 11 November 1965, on which Ian Smith declared the Unilateral Declaration of Independence that separated Rhodesia from the United Kingdom and set that white-dominated colony on the road to war, the small forgotten war in Africa in which my brother was killed.
From Marilyn Krisl:
SUMMER SOLSTICE,
BATTICALOA, SRI LANKA
The war had turned inward until it resembled
suicide. The only soothing thing was water.
I passed the sentries, followed the surf out of sight.
I would sink into the elements, become simple.
Surf sounds like erasure, over and over.
I lay down and let go, the way you trust an animal.
When I opened my eyes, all down the strand
small crabs, the bright yellow of a crayon,
had come out onto the sand. Their numbers, scattered,
resembled the galactic spill and volume of the stars.
I, who had lain down alone, emptied,
waked at the center of ten thousand prayers.
Who would refuse such attention. I let it sweeten me
back into the universe. I was alive, in the midst
of great loving, which is all I’ve ever wanted.
The soldiers of both sides probably wanted just this
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