Coming into intelligence

Coming Into Intelligence

I understood pain when I was a child,
When black scarves signified Red Baron dash
Or licorice-flavoured savagery
In a no-man’s-land of trash and smashed glass
Where torn, dirty pictures sliced open flesh
And kids stoned slow dummies or spat up bugs.

I understood pain in the sketches of war -
The comic-strip striptease of Hitler’s War:
I smelt Zyklon-B in lilac’s perfume,
Knew cyanide’s almond taste in chocolates,
And bathed in blue crystals like Europe’s Jews -
My bathtub flooding with death every night.

I understood pain; I will not tell lies.
I felt Hiroshima’s heat in black ants
Charred to ash by a magnifying glass.
I saw dismemberment in schoolyard art,
Then, in naked, store-window mannequins,
Then, in bodies mired in bombed My Lai roads.

I understood pain, studied suffering.
I fasted with the bloated innocents
Of Biafra, wept for Kennedy, King.
I confess I did not believe all the blood:
I had been cut only a few times.
Yet, the whole globe oozed a wet, crimson taint.

I understood pain when I was a child,
When my grandfather, choked by gypsum dust,
Felt his heart seize at light, heave him from darkness.
When I was a child, I was wise,
Knew why we suffer the sorrow we do.
Now that I am a man, I know nothing.

- George Elliot Clarke
(Lush Dreams, Blue Exile)