Homi Bhaba

A famous Harvard professor, Homi Bhaba, came to Carleton to speak last Thursday. According to his Wikipedia page, "he is one of the most important figures in post-colonial studies," and "he has been criticized for dense, barely comprehensible, jargon ridden prose."

I won't claim to have understood everything that Bhaba said during his hour-and-a-half long lecture, but, as he discussed the genocide in Sudan in terms of colonial discourse, I was moved. He also had fabulous glasses, and his eloquence was dazzling.

In fact, I kept a long list of direct quotes from Bhaba while he spoke, and re-arranged them in to the following poem after the fact. I'd like to think that it is an apt summing-up of his message.

I have dreamed of world revolution

Here we are, caught in between
violence and the sacred
striving to forget
the unpronounceable things we
scribbled in the margins of history.

"Life fell to pieces here,
... and now poetry is barbaric."

After such knowledge, what forgiveness?
How do we excavate the silences
while trapped in the double
time-frame of memory?
It's a terrible mystery--

but the future can't wait to be born
and I am here, in your poem
unsatisfied.