Requiem, Rwanda

Laura Apol is Associate Professor at Michigan State University, where she teaches poetry, writing, and literature.

“As if breaking through the distracting cacophony of the outsider’s voice, of history, of landscape, of curiosities, there come these terrible grace moments of song from the voices of Rwandans— from their memories, their hauntings, their rituals of forgetting and remembering—and in them we are reminded of the blunt truth of a human tragedy that defies language. Apol holds these moments as sacred, and in so doing she, too, becomes a witness.”—KWAME DAWES, author of Duppy Conqueror: New and Selected Poems

• Contents Foreword Preface Prologue: A Brief History of Rwanda Introit Genesis: The Source of the Nile Dies Irae Early April in Rwanda Six Seconds Even the Land Did Not Escape Canticle for the Bones of the Dead Genocide Site 1: Nyamata Church Genocide Site 2: Ntarama Church Eucharist Mother of God Church at Nyange Lacrimosa Witness Rift The Lives of Others Left Pink Confession Return to Remera Dry Bones Sanctus At the Hotel Bar Watching a Man Cut the Grass Lifelines Before Memorial Week: April 5, 2009 Poolside after Dark Testimony Meeting François in Heaven Samuel and the Boys Gorilla Family Amahoro Umuganda Reparations Rwanda Stands up for Haiti: January 2010 Language Lessons Benedictus Milkfugue Notes on the Poems Epilogue: Writer as Witness Notes Additional Resources Acknowledgments