Archive > Vol. 20 no. 2

D. Nurkse

Nurkse - Leaving Redeemer

Were you there when my country died?

Did you stand at the bedside, shoulder to shoulder with the doctor and the priest? Did you watch the pulse on the monitor carom, jag, and flat-line?

A person squeezed your hand, just once. Now there is no one.

Were you handed the clipboard with the forms to sign, columns of fine print, the paper flimsy, the pen out of ink, a polite waiting cough? Was it long before sunrise when you fumbled for your keys, in the half-lit parking lot?

The streets so empty. A few kids on tiptoe on the highest step of a stoop, arms tightly folded, stare at the convoys, as if to memorize the careening high beams. A soldier in a flak jacket directs traffic. How willed his gestures are, his arms must be heavy as granite, his face gray with exhaustion. How many nights since any of us slept?

The blocks to the old neighborhood succeed each other, never before so identical. A stray cat squats on the median strip, licking its paws, and won’t budge.You swerve, you don’t dare honk. A stop sign is swathed in black crepe. The school, the factory, the church, the mosque, the synagogue — each is marked off with crime-scene tape.

The pavement seems living under your car. The gears seem to anticipate a shift. The wheel turns of its own accord, a breath before you meant to. Yet this is the familiar route. Yes, you are going home, after so long an absence.

Now the flags. The immense red-white-and-blue flags, not one at half mast, rise higher than ever before, silent except for the creak of pulleys, moving like condor wings, obliterating a red sky.