Mysteries of Love
by Moná Ó Loideáin Rochelle
I Flight
What
of night? There are no fires.
Wind
wafts smoldering wood. Mother whispers
improbable
tales of love during black panther nights.
Near
midnight moon haloed birdsong lulls
us
to sleep. It’s then she cries for him—
our
father. Him in his birthplace. His face
at
the edge of the lake—our crops in flames.
On
his knees, he begs, Pitié, as
militants level guns.
And from his head rivulets
of red.
Imagine.
Rain as a celestial song, imagine trekking
kilometer
after kilometer through snarled forest
for
seventeen months. No one knows the way.
Not
even mother. We stay silent, traipsing splayed
hooves of bongos, narrow prints
that lead
to
somewhere. And afternoons? The sun burns
mosaic
through canopied palms, etching prisms
of
blue needled julienite as bonobos offer us guava
& garcinia. This, my friend, is a treatise of mothers’
love
from beginning to
end.
II After a
Killing
If this is the way you will deal with me,
then
please do me the favor of killing me at once, so that I need
no longer
face my distress.
NUMBERS 15:11
I am
spirit. I am nine months old.
My
soul the color of cassava, a field of bright
white
cassava—with clarity of fire. I see countless
Yellow-billed kites slowly cross
God’s dome.
We’re
told a child sleeps in the womb,
some
to be born under an iridescent moon:
I
was born under a blood moon.
Rapacious beasts, roving rebels
rive,
rape, vitiate. A pouring of fuel fills
my
virginal vestibule & a match
struck
cobalt
blue ignites violently—inside me.
& then the shot of a gun, point
blank,
through
my wound. & when I open
my
eyes to the sun, I see my mother—
who
formed me & named me Immaculée.
III Light You
Cannot See
A
mother on hands & knees & in her womb
a
heart beats in its blood cave, cord pulsing
in
rubied darkness. Labour of labours.
Like
the sea—a storm—wave crashing
upon
wave. & in her anguish she
groans,
I’m afraid. No family to
console her.
The
midwife trilled in Swahili—
I
won’t leave you.
Twenty
hours later, the infant enters
the
narrow lumen—head crowning,
adorned
in rosettes of red gem cuprites
& black garnets unfurling like a
dayflower,
blooming like an Egyptian
Starcluster.
The
midwife lays the babe (pure &
blameless)
on the young mother’s breast
in
dream-like light sublime white light.
The
camp resounds with joyful laughter when
they’re
told the mother names her daughter,
Exaucée, meaning prayer
fulfilled.
Above
the tent rain clouds open, fragrant
with
petrichor, promising much needed water.
It
was then the midwife’s thoughts drifted,
thoughts
of New Mexico’s cloudless skies
& mesas of fragrant piñon & sea-green sage.
Yes,
she’s been away far too long from him
& from her
children.
They
came & took us away.
We
were on foot, you ahead,
& I behind. Six tail-biting serpents
wore
guns slung over their backs.
We
girls held hands, strung together
like mother’s
rosary.
There
were so many friends I felt safe.
There
was an emerald river crossing—
shards
of light falling, snagged
in
the green burn of noon, where
the
jungle, a gateway to marsh,
swallowed
us whole.
It
was a Mai-Mai camp—I think.
My
sister held me close. I could see
their
leader, The Terminator
(my
sister called him The Bush Viper).
When
I cried my sister said,
‘Don’t be afraid.’
But I wasn’t
afraid.
I was hungry.
The
six mambas stripped me,
ugly puff adders,
cobras
with sharp fangs
smiling.
My
sister clothed me—she smelled of fresh grass—
& tried to console
me, cooing—
‘Remember
the field of maize tasting of mystery,
sky barely visible, our secret
place,
the keeper of peacocks?
Remember
singing with songbirds & dancing
under a thousand shadows of
trembling
gold leaves?
Remember
our garden full of friends & the rain
ruffling palms & swallowtails
taking flight on
wind?’
I
remember mother’s voice, an angelic river
singing.
I
remember her caress. I can taste
her kiss.
Today,
I search for you in sleepless
dreams. I don’t think about the ambush
tactics of snakes or soldiers’ gray souls.
I don’t think about lacerations too secret
to heal or castration with blunt machetes
or injustice that quarries one’s heart. I
don’t
think of severed hands bathed in blood
or killing everything living or fields
full
of dead bodies, our meadows of sorrow.
Come back to me maker of song today
& mark a sevenness moon under a bright
Congolese night. I’ll pull your body close,
your flesh of fragrant cassia & we’ll listen
to le langage tambourine. I think
of your soul,
my soul, one in love.
I think
of your lips I
can’t kiss.
Forgive my
cowardice.
Did
you think I abandoned
you
in our pillaged village?
No. Bush vipers abducted me. I’m afraid &
have forgotten how to pray.
LORD
deliver me from forever.
V Saint Dominic Church in Limete
& when they lift their eyes in the
village church,
a
pastoral peace of morning mass descends
like
a Senegal dove filling the morning with
fluttering wings. Family & friends—children of
God—kneel.
A
child listens to a Madagascar cuckoo’s song
from
waving coconut palms outside & imagines
he
too has wings. They sway & sing
the hymn
Be Thou My Vision in reverence, this & more,
praising
God’s wonders, calling for the Glory
of
God. Amen. Holy of holies, hear our prayers.
Amen,
amen. Mary Mother of God, sorrow
of
sorrows, console the dead! Amen, amen, amen.
& in his wisdom, Father Nkongo blesses them,
sending them off with words of love,
‘Do not hate,
for
the world can only be redeemed by love.
Remember God knows you each by name,
each
irreplaceable. Go in peace to love & serve
the
LORD.’ & as the flock flows forth
like a river
through
a narrow dam, waiting ‘security’ open fire.
Mothers clutch their child to the
breast, birds
in a
nest. Moved by the mothers’ courage,
the priest sprints forward, finding
himself at the front
of
the crowd, arms stretched out like a branch,
like
St. Kevin’s arms—stiff as a crossbeam!
A
drunk child soldier shoots Father in the head.
Is
he dead? & when Nkongo shouts
out,
‘We’re
no abattoir,’
the faithful clap their hands!
& then he shouts each soldier out by
name,
one
by one by one. He smiles like a child,
blessing the
crowd.
My
friends, open your hearts, journey with me &
contemplate the unnameable tales of unnameability.
Death comes through borders
invisible.
Ebola rages. Civil wars a débouché.
Words?
Cataclysmic
cacophonies.
So many memories: One from 80,000
years ago, Wene wa Kongo. It reached from
daybreak’s Lualaba River to
days end saltwater
sea, l' océan Atlantique. A land of a thousand
scented lilies, perfumed plumeria, wild
ginger’s bite of spice.
Jesuit missionaries wrote that the people
used telegraphe
de brousse 2,000 years ago,
thrumming drums of dried goat skins,
words crossing rivers & forests.
But then King
Leopold
came calling naming it,
Congo Free State, where indentured
slave
shadows
shrank from Belgian masters’
madness
& machetes & mass murders—
all
in our beloved land. And in villages?
Children watching.
What
can you say about militants who force
young
sons to rape & kill their mothers
under
a
crazed moon—all to plunder rubber & black
diamonds in
Leopold’s name?
Now we call
it—Democratic
Republic
of Congo, whose borders bleed
Congolese
into Uganda & Rwanda:
a half million refugees.
& what of the five million IDPs?
& what of the 19,000 MONUSCO attachés?
& what of the eight million dead?
America,
word on word. Europe, echo on echo.
Who
answers their bloodstained doors?
THE NATURE OF LOVE
I A Riddle
Riddle me this—
something’s amiss,
De Profundis:
for righteousness,
goodness,
kindness.
Licentiousness
is their business,
& we don’t care.
A far-off world
so embittered,
so embattled,
yet love abounds!
Where endless
wealth
ignores poor
health
with poacher’s
stealth!
Where might we be?
Crystal françoisite,
lime roubalite,
bright guilleminite,
where henchmen
steal malachite,
black tantalite,
red gem cuprite.
Etcher’s prisms
of loveliness
mined in darkness
& shamelessness,
feed despots’
greed.
Countless mines
hold
reserves of gold
smuggled we’re
told
into Dubai.
Tungsten & tin
& tantalum,
Taken! Stolen!
Worth three
trillion!
Helter-skelter,
swelter, smelter,
lack of shelter,
in unsafe mines,
supply our slick
phones, electric
cars, laptop
clicks.
Cobalt naïveté?
Uranium,
germanium,
& rhenium—
destruction looms.
Democracy?
Kleptocracy?
Demonocracy?
The DRC.
II
Ask the Children from Afar to Forgive Us
He ordered his soldiers to cut down
without mercy
those whom they met & to slay those who took
refuge in their homes.
There was a massacre of
young & old, a killing of women & children, a
slaughter of young women & infants.
2 MACCABEES 5:12-13
Anathema
maranatha: poaching
epidemics,
deforestation,
species depletion, heavy metal
pollution, land degradation & near extinction
of
the black Grauer’s gorilla. Anathema maranatha:
consumer
neediness & international
conglomerate
greediness. Anathema maranatha: specious militia.
Phantoms
of hate kidnap the Children of God—
depraved defilement without impunity. Shadows
of genocide.
Haven’t you heard? Women’s’ bodies
are
battlefields? The Congolese Warlord, The
Chairman, scoffed after a killing
spree—
When you’re a soldier everything’s free!
& in a JRS camp’s labyrinthine
paths,
a
child craves love: the beauty of a wild
orchid,
a fragrant lily—all the while bleating
for
her mother & from a tent a woman
sings,
Aren’t you Joséphine’s daughter? With a shy nod
the
child, thin as wind, holds out her hand.
The
wind’s still. It’s there—outside the camp
silhouettes
of a white-winged sunbirds pass
overhead
and the lightness of her mother’s
presence
flashes across the parched sand.
Hemorrhagic
fever, bright alizarin, sanguine
haematite. Épidémiologiste dream
outbreaks,
unravel genus Ebolavirus inside wildlife: monkeys,
chimpanzees, porc espis (reservoirs of the world’s
deadliest disease). They find chains of transmission
unforgiving. Send vaccines
from the four corners.
Who cares to hear? (Who hears?) Tell me if you
know.
Invisible contagion—child to child—friend to
friend—village to village—city to
city—country to
country—friend to friend—child to child—kiss to
kiss—unknown to
unknown.
North
Kivu’s a war zone. It’s different this time.
I
might die. Headquarters radios evacuate:
/ Volatile /
Violence /
& in the isolation
unit twelve children lie
in
feverdreams, almost out of their minds.
I
finalize reports on Ebola’s cross-border spread—
can’t
send today—internet’s down. WTF!
Likely the ADF.
I
struggle to adhere to MSF protocol.
Putting
the pen down I squint into the tent—
the
child arrived just in time.
Fragile.
An orchid? A
lily?
She’s
the age of my daughter Sinead in Inishmore.
I am Sanctifiée—
daughter
of Josephine, snatched away—
my
family vanished dew. My flesh a blazing
a
funeral pyre. Twenty-one days infected.
The
doctor loves me. She tells me,
you’ll live and soon see your brother. I maw—Brother?
Where’s my mother?
Dr. Farrell closes her eyes. All she can hear
is the echo of staff leaving.
I
come, fountain on fountain, fiery lava,
like
Nyamuragira, eruption after eruption.
‘Truthfully, I’m not sure what
to
say about an Ebola epidemic in a war zone.
To
simply list bare facts of case investigation,
detection, cross-border
transmission & deaths—
to
soon becomes near meaningless
to
the world. Even our stories of staff, who in the
course of visiting villages are
attacked
by fearful
grandmothers
wielding
machetes—it’s grim &
makes
for bad news. I’m no Guillaume Apollinaire!
I
wish I was, poetry’s good for that.
Tell
me what to do with that?’ asked
Anouk
Scroch, an Amsterdammer assigned to Kivu.
& at that—making the sign of the cross—
the
Congolese field worker in suit & tie reports,
‘In
all seriousness, to explain what we see all day
you’d
have to be a poet & I’m no Emmanuel
Boundzéki Dongala! He’s an éclat.’
Then she
added, ‘Nevertheless, since its genesis I’ve
witnessed
holy
innocents’ lives ended, nothing left & acts of
untold heroism of mothers
again & again & again.’
The
Spanish epidemiólogo shouted,
‘Well,
I’m no Miguel Hernández, but listen:
What’s
complex & difficult & radically
ambiguous
here—is truth—one either
does
justice to reality or destroys it.’
& then
the Spaniard recited
these
lines from memory—
‘Sitting
upon the dead fallen
silent
these two months, I kiss empty shoes…
the
nightingale of the pitiful, echo of bad luck,
to
sing and repeat to those who must
hear
me, everything of pain…’
NOTES
FLIGHT: Bongos-a herbivorous nocturnal threatened
antelope, found in African dense forest; Bonobos-
endangered great ape found in the DRC.
A CHILD’S
LITANY: Mai-Mai are militia who use
rape as a weapon of war. Accounts of these rapes include mutilation and the
killing of unborn children. The sexual violence is so severe in the DRC that
some have described rape as the worst in the world.
ENVENOMATION:
Le langage tambourine- a drummed language.
SAINT DOMINIC CHURCH IN LIMETE: Stiff as a crossbeam is taken from St
Kevin and the Blackbird by Seamus Heaney. Abattoir is French for slaughterhouse.
HOUSE OF
FIRE: DRC is the centre of numerous
exploitations of diverse metals in a multitude of mines and quarries;
therefore, the poem lists DRC’s many precious gemstones and minerals.
ENTRACTE: Telegraphe de brousse-Drummed messages
traveling up to 370 miles a day, a communication preceding Morse Code by 1,500
years; IDP-internally displaced
persons; MONUSCO-Mission de
l'Organisation des Nations unies pour la stabilisation en République Démocratique
du Congo, the UN’s peacekeeping force in the DRC.
ASK THE
CHILDREN FROM AFAR TO FORGIVE US: JRS-Jesuit
Refugee Service.
FEVER
FUGUE: MSF- Médecins Sans
Frontières; WTF-What the feck; ADF-Allied Democratic Forces armed group
formed in 1995 on Islamic principles (Salafi doctrine).
TRANSLATIONS:
End lines are from Miguel Hernández’s poem “Sitting Upon the Dead.”
* * * * *
"Mysteries
of Love" was first published in The American Journal of Poetry (Volume 8: January 2020).
COMMENTARY by Moná Ó Loideáin Rochelle: I was born in Scituate, Massachusetts to Irish Catholic
parents. My father, grandmother and grandfather all died the year I was born,
leaving our family in poverty. In 1970, I dropped out of Boston College on a
full scholarship and became a Certified-Nurse-Midwife. Years later I attended
the University of Washington and obtained a PhD and MPH and entered academia.
However, my most significant experiences occurred in post-civil war Liberia;
Mombasa, Kenya; Abkahzia and the Republic of Georgia. Witness to evil firsthand
in these places, the suffering, the victim’s accounts beyond comprehension,
tormented me for a long time. It wasn’t until 2010 that I was accurately
diagnosed with protracted, chronic PTSD, which had been compounded by early
childhood incest and abuse. Mysteries of Love draws on these
experiences, combining persona, patterned form, fact and fiction.
