Inspired by the quiet homage to the 1994 Rwanda Genocide that Wangechi Mutu started posting on social media on April 6, I decided to respond. I offer these poetic pieces as a way to think about the way in which we navigate through knowing about and understanding the genocide and other wars that endure. Here are 100 Days – 91 Days

Day 91

We couldn’t have known, nine days in
That it would ever be over
It was a time warp that had us
In flashes and then in woozy moments 
That took forever

A machete hangs in a museum in Ottawa
A machete hangs perpetually in a museum in Ottawa
A machete hangs like a mockery of time
Like a semblance of that reality
In which another machete
Other machetes hang for what seemed a long time
But eventually they come down
Again and again and again and again and again
Even time marked by machete strokes
Can never be accurate

 

Day 92

We wish for absolution for a clearing
for a forgetting, a filling of the heart
& a joyousness once more

We wish for children of innocence
we wish for an instantiation of things
a rationality that resonates with our emotions

We wish for the silence of the moon
the quieting of ghosts 
& a peace to rest in

 

 

 

Day 93

Suffice to say that there was nothing sufficient for some
Elsewhere:
Elections, and the winners won
A car chase
War ended
Another war continued
Jackal emerged
Earth rattled
Now headlines
Now pictures
Now memories
Now colour
Now movement
Now silence
Now drama
Nothing reflects the efficiency with which those days went by
We were betrayed by a month and a half that now we call commemoration

 

 

 

Day 94

 

We walked when our legs could carry us
hinky pinky ponky
hinky pinky ponky
Childhood rhythms carried us along
hinky pinky ponky
hinky pinky ponky
Songs from days of innocence
Like holding hands, like soft embraces
hinky pinky ponky
hinky pinky ponky
Father had a donkey
We needed a rhythm to walk
To move, to drag ourselves along

Who could count past four?
Acel ariyo adek angwen
Who could count past four?
hinky pinky ponky
hinky pinky ponky
Father had a donkey
Donkey die
Father cry
hinky pinky ponky
It seemed as though there was a time before tears
It seemed a dream to think that there was a time when fathers could cry

 

 

 

Day 95

 

Time, they taught us
Was linear and exact 

Time was a series of beats, a line extending from the beginning of things

Forget the idea that illumination is an indication of knowing

Forget that 
We were trapped in a hundred days, a hundred days
Of light, each following the other, each following the other

Time bore witness to our erratic heartbeats but we
remain trapped in a hundred days that have morphed into years and years

How can we exist outside of betrayal by time and land?

 

 

 

 

Day 96

What is the essence of beauty?
Why do mists mean, swirl and rise but never completely disappear?
Why should iron gleam through soil?
Why should our dances be graceful, our cloths bright
Our memories long, our language rich and layered?
Why should beauty render us speechless?
What is it to come from a land that swallows its own people?

 

 

 

Day 97

The poet told us of her brother
The poet told us of her drunken brother, speaking of his dreams
He was an alcoholic, he was always drunk
The poet told us about her drunken brother who spoke of his mad, mad dream
She told us how he spoke like a mad man, about this dream
Like a prophet, insisting on an unknown truth
Like the drunken man that he was, imposing faith that no one wanted to hear
Like Jesus
Like all the holy prophets, even the ones we forgot
The poet told us about her brother who spoke of a dream
In which everybody would die
They would kill everybody
Except me, she said
Except me

 

 

 

 

Day 98

If this should be a list of betrayals where should we begin?
At last, we’re here
At last, we’re gone
What is this life beyond one hundred days?
What is this life beyond one hundred days, twenty times over?
What days are left?
We were already in medias res
We were always inside one hundred days

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 99

It was sunrise every morning
It was the same land
The same sky 
The same rivers, hills, valleys
It was the same road that led away and back home
Same sweet air that amplified the voices through whispers, gossip, airwaves
Words leapt into our eyes and burned this new knowledge that was never new
But it was the earth that betrayed us first 
In those one hundred days that would never end

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 100

It was the earth that betrayed us first. 
It was the earth that held on to its beauty, compelling us to return. 
It was the breezes that were there, and then they were not there. 
It was the sun that rose and fell, rose and fell, as if there was nothing different: as if nothing changed