Democratic Rites
Bare feet and brown arms
Horizontal through the green
Steel picket pens, holding
Them in their kind, waiting
Waiting in the sun, the dust,
the steam of another day
To sit for the man in the white shirt
Tell a story, add a name
To the Niue Klin liz fo goodfella elekshun.
In the hundreds they come to confirmation,
gather in a park for the right to make their mark
Ranked in their uniform of dependency
Cast offs from the cargo culture of away
Shirts declaring foreign events long dead
Feet tough as life itself
Pads, toes squeezing dust and mud
And babies grabbing for the tit
Only the children play carefree.
Hoping for a long promised redemption
Happy to fulfill this act of confirmation,
voting will be their baptism, sacramental act
Government of the people
the new just heaven promised
without sacrifice, contrition.
Out along the roads to the old war
monsters rusting in the jungle groves
Some sisters gather at shonky market stalls
Selling sad bits of sustenance to each other
Naked children lie atop a starving, empty stand
A Niue klin goodfella generation without hope.
What will remain when the civil gospel succeeds
Destroys the old structures, fond beliefs
Then fails to usher in the promised heaven, brave new earth.
About this: I was in Solomon Islands, advising on the development and drafting of a new federal constitution, heavily influenced by western social justice ideals. During the last week of our congress, the people were gathering in a park to register as voters for an election later in the year.
I saw these democratic rituals as parallel to many religious rites, providing identity, confirmation, sacrament, hope, promise of future glories.
But their reality is so far removed from the promise, I wondered what might follow their next disillusionment.