The Gulf**
Poets will be sitting in various parts of the theatre, some of which will be kicking around a soccer ball and laughing. As the lights dim, one guard at the front of the house shouts
Guard:
Interahamwe!!!!
Lights out-
The lights come up on two poets dangling from various set pieces. George Gershwin’s Summertime fades up as the poets speak.
Poet 1:
As bodies recline after hours in the sun
Hearts settle to the rhythm of the world they inhabit.
Dirty bare feet skip along gravel-
Dust laden shorts create clouds of joy
As ashy heels find contact with a perfect
If only half inflated
Ball.
It is time for play.
Poet 2:
And as the Virunga mountains have a passionate kiss with the evening sun, children laugh at the thought of going inside.
The dusk fills the air, clouding all vision
Of the photographic green
Of the unimaginable wonder
The intangible taste
The perfection
The dips and curves and secrets
Of the glorious woman that Rwanda has become.
Poet one finds his/her way to the audience seating, this is a direct address to one person they find.
Poet 4:
Brash and curt, men in suits
Break free from their confinement within the
Kingdom of Kigali.
Rushing past motor vehicles
as wings with no body
they find a banana beer
and feel complete that the day is at its end.
Poet 3 emerges on the floor from a previously unimposing location while reciting the following section, trampling over Poet 2’s attempt to recite the lines.
Poet 3:
The brisk night slides onto the valleys and hills.
No longer illuminating the world
Rwanda radiates a green luminescence
That lulls all those eyes
And settles the world for sleep.
Hutu and Tutsi discover stillness,
ready to find one another again
Just as the mountains made love to the sun.
Enter Poets 1&2, they share the final lines of the poem.
Poet 1 and Poet 2:
Mothers.
Kiss your children on their prefect heads
(beat)
When we wake
It will be
All Poets
April 7th, 1994.
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