Dakar

Minute spiders weave their useless veil

from side to side,

filling my plastic Air Afrique cup.

Dakar, land of elegant swaying women

with wise eyes oblivious to the abattoir,

lies below.

A web of lights fighting night's humid oppression,

a mock modernity penetrating old, old tropics.

Ile de Goree,

created from eternal planes of sienna and ochre

from palms of darkness,

whose sea birds sweep into inner hearts.

Goree, that gave the daughters and sons of Africa

to slavery,

to suffering beyond name:

loss of family,

loss of community,

loss of culture.

Senegal, birth place and true source

of the children of Colombia:

our mothers who teach,

our fathers who remember,

our daughters who suffer,

our sons who try, try to forget.

The carrion birds of Dakar

carrying heavy scented wings to air, cloth and water,

no longer fly to Goree,

no longer fly to Cartagena de Indias,

no longer own us anymore.

But their ancestral shadows

still weave droplets of exquisite pain

in our visceral memories,

in our wars for freedom,

in our struggle that appears to have no end...

A thousand, thousand years from now

will we need -- still -- to remember?

Emily Vargas-Baron

November 19, 1997

Flight from Dakar to Paris after meeting

of African ministers of education.