ICORN Guest Writers Speak Out

EXILE
 
(Alfred Tennyson’s poem, “The Lotus-eaters,” recounts the many adventures of Ulysses and his crew making their way home after the Trojan war. Having experienced terrible tragedy at the hands of the one-eyed Cyclops and the sorceress who changed half the crew inot pigs, they finally come to an island where young men and women offer them lotus-fruit to eat. They accept and after eating the fruit, experience extreme lethargy, yet it is a welcome rest from all the struggles and they rest temporarily.)
 
I ask this question in the night

will guilt always be

my companion in exile?

the accusing knowledge

that I chose to run away

rather than stay on and fight?

Self-knowledge can be a road of painful discoveries.

Yesterday I had believed I was true

I had believed I was brave, even,

letting out a squeak of protest

whenever one more was killed.

I tried to name them one by one

but I could not name them all

there were so many being killed

too many.

In unwilling dreams I still see

the horrid last sight of home:

my friend’s mother’s blood

and the blood of a young man she never knew

flowing together in a purple pool

refusing to congeal.

Ah, my country, my sweet homeland

it was not enough for you that I loved you

you would have me dash myself against the rocks to prove it.

 
Remember the soldier whose nerve broke

and made him run from the battlefield

madly, from tree to bombed-out-stump-of-tree

from one cracked open rock to the next

just running away to anywhere at all

anywhere he would not have to hear

the sounds of the battle

and the terrible cries of the dying

every which way he turned?

Somewhere where he could close his eyes

and not see his friend’s eyes glaze over in death

remember him?

that one in the war movies everyone loved to hate

because he wasn’t man enough to die?

In self-exile

that is what I hate about myself

that ugly runaway soldier in me.

The constant accusation

that I chose to run for safety

when the right thing

the brave thing

would have been to stay and stand and shout

“Stop, stop the killings!”

and grit-gut myself

to being shot in the back

or head, or heart

anywhere, but basically shot to death for speaking out.

That is how some men

have fought our battle back home

led by the vision

that the courage to say no

is more important than life itself.

But I

I came hither

with my pilgrim burden

soul-sick of the killing and the dying

only wanting life for me and mine

so grateful for a little peace, a little slice of life.

I am kin to the lotus-eaters

I am so weary of being tossed by sea storms,

washed up on your shores, half dead

I lie on these sands, these spreading grasses

lulled into forgetfulness

deaf to the urgent calls of wife and children

of that place I called home;

“Let me be, let me be, for a little while

I have such need of this lotus-rest

I must lie still and wait

till my strength returns to me.”

God-led to this, my lotus-land

I raise my drowsy head

I pluck at my broken harp

and am astonished to find

I can remember

what my people were

before they came to be

what they are now.

The happy songs and poems and stories

before this unhappy present.

I saw a slogan on a Tromsø bus:

“Angst is so yesterday!”

Truly, I am tired of my angst

and the angst of my homeland.

Allow me to sing a new song

Oh country of my rebirth

I must, perforce, tell of where I came from

but your singing woods and calm skies

your tranquil shores and starry nights

evoke like harmony in me.

Allow me to tell a happy tale for now:

“There was a maiden in our village, so fair, so fair

that none of the  young men felt themselves equal

to ask for her hand in marriage.

Then one day, the sky-dweller came and claimed her

for himself, so all ended well.”

Tomorrow,

Tomorrow we will talk if you still want to listen

of the man who looked his father’s killer in the eye

and said gently, “For Christ’s sake, I forgive you.”

Today, do not make me tell that tale

we can do with some respite from weeping.

Ah, my country, my sweet homeland

it was not enough for you that I loved

you would have me dash myself against the rocks to prove it.

 
One day I would like to go home again. By way of the silk route if all other routes are closed to me, tracing the snow mountain passes of my mongolian ancestors. And  hopefully finding stories buried in snow. The brutality of life at home has driven me away. Far from home, the brutalisation of my people still haunts me and makes me grieve for them and the political bloodbath that is killing everything of value in our hills. If you will listen, I would like to share our tales, both the happy ones and the unbearably sad ones because they have both gone into the making of my people.
 
In writing I am always addressing two audiences, one, the audience at home, and the other, the new readership in Europe who confess that they never even knew that there was a country called Nagaland. There is such angst therein. In my lotus land, I am torn by the tempation to only write sweet stories about Norwegian trolls who turn to stone when the sun rises so that the captive princess escapes thereby, yet my heart feels its terrible duty to make visible the invisible conflict my people have been slave to. The  long story of occupation and genocide that no one has heard of. What angst it is to be real.
 
I am the ancient mariner
I have been alone, all all alone on the vast sea
and seen what no man should have seen.
Henceforth must I fix my glitt’ring eye upon you
and you, I hope, like the wedding guest, will listen.
 
 
Our grandfathers told this story. Earth and Sky were man and wife: Earth was bigger than sky so when Sky said, “Wife fold up your knees so I can cover you,” Earth folded up her knees and they became the mountains. But because Earth was so big, there were parts of her left out when Sky covered her. There were people living on those edges of the earth. They grew wrinkled in a year because there was no sky to protect them from those harsh, harsh winds.
 
I sometimes imagine that my people are those people living upon the edges of the earth, crying to be let in but dismissed by those inside as just howling wind. These are the stories I am struggling to tell, the invisible stories, of a nation denied birth, and the long struggle that is killing itself from within.
 

And then, I ask the night sky, why is it so important to be visible? Why does it have to matter so much that as much of the world as possible know that we once lived on our portion of earth and were denied voice and life? My lotus-land restores my throttled voice slowly. If you will listen, I can do the telling now.