picture: Brian Wertheim
Synopsis
“This poem is about how lies told by the powerful purposefully distort memory, acting as the collective impact of the bite of a Tsetse fly on the broad population, causing a deep sleep and forgetfulness, ultimately ignorance.”
We have no history recent nor ancestral it seems the dead are alive dictators are saints conquerors are heroes and rapists the victims of gossip. It happens that every time that history yawns after a long ‘siesta’ to regain strength and sticks her head up wielding a pen or a megaphone snakes scramble to inject her with the poison of the Tsetse fly. So she falls again into the well of the vanished no funeral or tombstone marking her grave while the dissonant chorus of the sovereigns and their greedy sycophants reminds us that we have no more history than their terrifying tales. But the dead are alive they remember everything word spreads and history rears her head, rising this time with wings, with feathers vaccinated against fright oblivion and lies.