Lauren Delapenha
During World War II, the mining town of Shinkolobwe was dropped from maps of the Belgian Congo to protect the secrecy of its uranium ore. This rock would later supply most of the raw materials for the world’s first atomic bombs.
I.
How to erase a place?
The Congolese government tried burning.
The column of smoke was visible
for miles for days. Did the miners
dance around the burning town?
Did they smear their skin
with the soot, the sweat,
the evidence of toil –
the evidence of sin –
their only inheritance
from forbears who bit the flesh
which soiled the hearts of men
so that, for a piece of cloth,
a man sold his kin?
Was it the heat from the pit
of that fruit which set
their limbs to kindling?
II.
The smouldering tree stumps
were left sticking out of the ground
like blunted arms –
the handless ones –
limbs could no longer beg
but could amuse
smoking in long draws
the way cut stumps which
still suck the earth for water
point upwards to accuse
the sky which supplied
the awful oxygen
both for breathing
and for burning.
III.
the men emerge
from the mud
as mud
but move
as gods
stepping lightly
only occasionally
dropping their bodies
to the ground
to hear the rocks
breathe
Lauren Delapenha recently completed a Master’s in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford. She is the recipient of the 2019 Grindstone Literary International Poetry Prize, as well as the joint winner of the 2018 Helen Zell and Jamaica Poet Laureate Young Writer’s Prize for Poetry. She currently lives in Jamaica, where she works as an English tutor and writing coach.
