The Opposite of War
| I’ve lost my accent somewhere. Maybe I dropped in the Thames, or it fell victim to a ghost of the Tower, or a Windsor swan plucked it from my fingers like bread, but I hope it was swallowed, drowned, trampled by polished boots during the changing of the palace guard because I have never felt so screamingly blended and whole. I could never find it anyway in this seek-and-flutter of color— Skin like rice and beans and bread, Vegetarian choices and tea. And the uniforms: A modern exotic salad, with British, American, Norwegian, Polish, Korean, iceberg khaki, Japanese spinach leaves, curly banana crisps, topped with Malaysian mangoes, Chilean blueberries, rich German raspberries, a sprig of French Parsley, and fruits and seeds like stagelights all topped with white summer light for a dressing. One line seemed universal: "Where are you from?" One line in London streets, Roman exhibits, and the Queen’s roses threaded with bees, echoed later when tears fell from beneath a cowboy hat onto a lotus flower— and though we never closed at night, the wedges of our worlds unfurled and overlapped, tied with “Where are you from?” And the Prince sliced chocolate cake for us with his helicopter, golden dragons slithered from camp to camp, business cards fluttered everywhere like leaves. We did more than I can list. We ran mountains with metal slides, built catapults, rang church bells, painted, planted, traded, sailed. But mostly we danced in every language. Forty thousand of us— dancing to O-zone, cursing at vending machines, and arguing about African education— from 216 countries all over the Earth— each with a different view of God above it and Satan inside it— We babbled about the falling ame and family. I’d never felt, heard, eaten so many wonders— and I’d never seen a gentleman cry like that, screaming through the arms around him that she was a blond half-Asian. She had died in his arms four months before. In the thick and thesis of our new summary of earth, we were reminded of things that fall away. And did soldiers guide us all here by the hands, disappear so that we could curse at vending machines as one world, one family? Because if the World Wars The Trail of Tears, the Boxer Rebellion, The Rape of Nanking, the Ravage of Africa, The Russian Starvations-- And if Iraq Darfur, Sudan Georgia, Europe Mumbai, India The Gaza Strip If these things wound and kill, our many colors evoke life with their vividness life that manifests as stop-and-go conga lines neckerchiefs of many signatures international flirtation. They keep it safe by sealing it in pictures that steal souls and snatching business cards straight out of the wind. Our blending colors heal and keep alive. |
