How We Became Human by Joy Harjo

Author:Joy Harjo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2012-06-25T16:00:00+00:00

THE END

Pol Pot, infamous leader of the Khmer Rouge, responsible for the killing of thousands, died peacefully in his sleep April 15, 1998. His body was burned on a stack of old tires, tended to by a few exhausted soldiers. In the midst of the burning the fist of the corpse saluted.

The dark was thicker than dark. I was a stranger there. It was a room

of ten thousand strangers, in a city of millions more.

The park across the street was heavy with new leaves

with an unbearable sensual drift

I had been sleeping for a few hours, and the room was thick with time

and ash. I wasn’t dead though I was traveling

through the dark. The lower gods pounded the pipes for my

attention, the bed swayed with the impact of unseen

energy. No one saw it. No one saw anything

because it was dark and in the middle of the night and it was just

a hotel room, one of millions of hotel rooms all over

the world, filled with strangers looking for refuge,

sleep, for sex or love. We were a blur of distinctions,

made a fragrance like a glut of flowers or piss on concrete.

Every detail mattered

utterly, especially in the dark, when I began traveling.

And I was alone though the myth of the lonely stranger is a lie

by those who think they own everything even the earth

and the entrails and breath of the earth. This was the end.

It was Cambodia or some place like it, and the sun

was coming up, barely over the green in the restless shiver of

a million singing birds. Humans were wrapping

a body for burial. It stank of formaldehyde. It was a failed clay

thing, disheveled and ordinary. They rolled it

into a box and dragged it to a stack of trash. Why have I come here

I asked the dark, whose voice is the roar of history as it travels

with the thoughts of humans who have made the monster.

The fire was lit

fed with a wicker chair, a walking cane, and several busted

tires to make it hot. What I had

feared in the dark was betrayal, so I found myself there

in the power of wreckage. There was no pause

in the fighting. The killer’s charred fist pointed toward the sky,

gave an order though no one heard it

for the crackle and groan of grease. The fire was dark

in its brightness and could be seen by anyone

on the journey, the black smoke a dragon in the sky.

This was not the end.

I was attracted by a city, by a park heavy with new leaves,

by a particular flower burning in the dark.

I was not a stranger there.

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