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41 Sand The eye is not satisfied with seeing, not the ear with hearing. Ecclesiastes Each day I awaken in darkness, to the joy of that particular silence when the earth becomes herself again shedding centuries of clutter. Even here the fort and cannons disappear. Every building is erased by night. Only the moon and stars remain and the waves rolling over sand sounding like steady distant breaths. Your breath is everywhere, dissolving like hours. Only now can you enter my heart. It is a small crowded place— like this island, once a brief cluster of weeds and sand, now filling with high houses built one on top of the other. Each one bigger than the last, assuming a kind of permanence. You have watched it all come and go. Conquerors, pirates, soldiers and slaves. Long battles at sea. The violence 42 that began a nation, and later divided it. Consider the soldiers who washed up like dead fish, or the countless Africans who came ashore in chains and never left the lazaretto. Buried in mass graves unmarked and unvisited, they remain and outnumber all who have followed. Day after day the wind sweeps across the island smothering the shattered bones and blood in layers of swirling sand. I gather handfuls and watch it scatter through my fingers. This is all that remains beneath the seaweed, stars and sweet myrtle; sea birds scattered in the rain. I lower my head and remember this is where you live and suffer. In the stillness I see the things that are not visible. I hear voices no one else can hear, except for you. ...

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