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The Peace of the Dead (a Piece of the Dead).
To be read as
if accompanied by the music of a slow dance (perhaps a Courante or Sarabande)
anyway performed in 6/4 time.
(Verses.)
Beckett’s ‘Not I’ writ large, writ communally; Not We. Not us. Not
them. We do not forget. Not Them. (Or ‘not I’ as the (untold) story of guilt, a
guilt elided, unspoken… event circled, generating words, but finally
unmentionable, then the silence (the highlighted, framed, silence) itself as
the finger of guilt, pointing (silently, to the unnamed, but known).
…absence (now)
is become a piece of the Dead, their absence; absence, a piece of their
absence.
Killing fields not at the place that bears their name, but (as
always) elsewhere. Surrounding the name that names the wound. So sometimes the
site is named (…and it is a measure of how far the times fall short of their
ideal that we all know some names) and sometimes there is the (near) silence of
metonymy.
And then there are (and then there were) the killing fields that
killed through absence… the absence of empty fields… (now, at their
half-centenary… unmarked) the stolen grain, the scattered graves (unmarked).
…’and then
there were’… if forgotten…; ‘there are’ implies memory, a present place-name
that recalls, memorialises, brings (back) to mind, allows for the survival of
(because not forgotten, so not lost, not disappeared, in this sense the
continuation of) the past.
Absent names. Absent place names. Absent names (of the absent
(absent from roll-call of the living (…))).
Dates and absences. On that
day, on one such day… the quietest day… silence and absence as memorial. (An
unofficial silence to match the official silence (one of those official silences),
as of the emptiness of the streets on other days, on those … special days.
Officially special, marked by a ritual (official). Just as the unofficial is
also a kind of marking, an unofficial ritual for the dead (their absence and
ours…). Our absence and our silence, marking theirs, a ritual marking, a ritual
mimesis, ritual conferring identity, namely: those who remember and those who
are to be remembered… (names, unnamed… unspoken… but remembered). As is just
and fitting until something marking, some marking, something physical arrives
to remind… to mark (those dates and those names, so many and so demanding in
their absence). Those marked by absence. Memory marked by absence… By silence
(for now)… …a silence altogether more fitting.
A silence that stood out.
‘Altogether
more fitting’.
(Chorus.)
Altogether. An absence we can share; a piece of (their) absence.
Altogether. A kind of communion - with silence as the Host.
Communion Host. Bread of the body of the Dead. The host of the disappeared; our
communion… our ritual of communion with the Dead.
Absence : for we all may partake of the peace of the Dead.
Together. (…).
Altogether. (Swallowing silence, swallowing in silence).
Partake of a piece of the Dead.
Copyright,
Peter Nesteruk, 2011.