That Silent Island: Gorée

That Silent Island

A poem by Rachel Hess Wachman

The silent island sings a song of suffering
Echoes into the empty ocean
Reverberating until the whole world has heard —
A ripple in a pond once still, never to be silent again

Waves slap the intrepid shores, reborn
Tracing the rugged paths of those since lost.
Seagulls caw overhead, the secret streets surveyed
Nothing unseen, no one escapes
That same suffocating heat of centuries gone
Presses in until there’s nothing left
Nothing but faint yet fervid cries of freedom
Permeating the patchwork hearts of passers by
Never dying even after broken bodies follow broken spirits
Persisting in a long-since shattered world

Cells overpacked with grains of sand
Sifted through, used and cast aside
Crushed together until only dust remains.
Thrust into a cruel unknown
Shriveling as plants torn from ancient roots by profiting hands
Drowning in an endless dessert

Ships set sail, dusk settles in 
Centuries of journeying drag on
Until the once silent island rings with youthful laughter
Until parents recount to their young ones the struggles woven into Today
Until Freedom burgeons from the burdened soil,
The island at last reclaimed

Yet the scars of civilization’s wounds still mar the landscape
For even amidst the sky alight with the infinite dawns of Tomorrow
That same water, history’s witness,
Rushes forever out to sea and back again