Kwame Dawes
Ghana
Related Event
Kwame Dawes
Emmy Award winning Kwame Dawes ...
BIOGRAPHY
Born in Ghana in 1962, Kwame Dawes spent most of his childhood and early adult life in Jamaica. He i... More >
For John MazourcaThese days, the language of deathis a dialect of betrayals; the bodiesbroken, placid as saints, hobblealong the tiled corridors, from roomto room. Below the dormitoriesis a white squat bungalow, a chapelfrom which the handclaps and chorusesrise and reach us like the scentof a more innocent time.I am trying to listen to the plumpPalestinian man with his swayingrural middle-class patois, this jovialservant, his eyes watering at the memoryof the eleven year old girl broughtto die inside these white walls,her small body fading, her eyesfierce with light and hungryfor wide open spaces, for decadesof discovery ahead of her.When she came her mind was stillunable to calculate the treacheryof rape, to grasp how a mancould seek revenge on her tender body;why as he wept when they took himaway, she wept, too, like the dayshe wept when they took her mother’sempty body away, the diseaseleaving her with nothing but bones,thin skin, the scent of chickens.I seek refuge in distractions:the chapel of charms down the hill;the pure sound of my youth,when, cleansed by the perpetual blood,my sins were never legion enoughfor despair; when the comfortof the Holy Spirit was green as thissloping escarpment, thick with trees,cool against the soft sunlight.The plump man brushesthe gleam of tears from his cheeks.I think of the simple equationsof compassion; I think of songs,the harmonica, the strainedharmonies, the bodies of the dyingshuffling past, eyes still hoping;the van waiting in the shadeto take me from all this;the long ride through rain and darkto Kingston, to sleep and more sleep.
