CANADIAN DEATHS IN THE BOER WAR

Written after reading about the North Koreans who have been killed, wounded, or captured fighting in Ukraine for Russia

by Steve Hellyard Swartz

In Quebec City there's a monument to Canadian soldiers killed in action during the Boer War in South Africa from 1899 to 1902

Whenever I saw that little memorial I thought about what it must have been like to be a young French Canadian man conscripted into service,

You're on a boat with others trying to be brave

And it's not that hard, still on the boat, there are card games and smokes and the food is bad but you're young and it's an adventure

You don't love that most of your fellow soldiers aren't from Quebec and speak English but they seem okay and there are enough French-speakers so you pretty much know what's going on

And then you get there

Which is where exactly?

Where are we?

No one is exactly sure what they call the place where  you are

You get off the boat and the sign isn't what you recognize as French or English.

Someone tells you it's Dutch, or what the white people in this place speak, which comes from Dutch

You want to know how the hell the Dutch got involved in all this but no one has time to tell you

Red-faced men are barking in English for everybody to do something

You look around and do what everybody else is doing

The red-faced man and other red-faced men are pointing and screaming for you to March!

You march

Some of you are smiling and when you ask why you're told it's better than being on that fucking boat, at least this is something, at least we're doing what we're here to do

Which is what? And where are we? 

Nobody knows for sure but at least it's not nothing

You get on a train and it's warm

Windows are opened

Cigarettes are passed around, someone has a bottle but it's empty before you can get it

The train rolls on forever

You look out the window and it looks like a lot of nothing

Is this what they're fighting over? And who is this "they" anyway?

It's the fucking British, it's not the French, that much you know.

So who is it then - the British against the Dutch? Or what passes for Dutch out here? What passes for British?

You wonder if you pass for British? You think about how your parents and grandparents, your aunts and uncles, your sister and brother, would not be happy with you passing for British

So why are you here? You look at the other soldiers laughing, smoking, passing around another bottle.

You know that the bottle will be empty before it reaches you

This is bullshit you think

Why the fuck am I here?

Somebody offers you a cigarette and you take it

An English-speaker offers you the bottle with one swig left,

You take it, you smile, he lights your smoke.

You think about that as you lie on the field later that day

You think about his nice smile and how he flicked the match against his thumb

You'd die for a smoke right now, you'd die for a swig

You close your eyes and feel the African sun hot on your face,

You hear someone yelling but you don't know these words

You don't want to die like this, this is no way to die

So you open your eyes to see the one thing you understand

You open your eyes and stare at the sun.

Steve Hellyard Swartz's movie Never Leave Nevada opened at the Sundance Film Festival thirty-five years ago this week. He is an award-winning poet, filmmaker, movie critic, and the author of a new memoir The Last Jewish Mother Joke.

DIASPORA FOOTBALL

by Indran Amirthanayagam

It was a difficult day at the Qatar World Cup. Our American ambassadors, 

Argentina and Brazil, both with attacking teams who strike as lightning 

and sit back as well controlling the ball, dribbling it back and forth, 

 

wearing the patience down of their European opponents—had leads 

vanish with minutes to go, the European powers striking back, 

and in the case of Croatia pulling off the upset, mighty Brazil losing 

 

on penalties. But Argentina survived. Shot its penalties with clinical 

power, and their goalkeeper used his brain to anticipate the directions 

of the Dutch kicks. I am writing this to remember a Friday in December 

 

when honor lay on the field, and glory, and also bitter defeat. This is 

the field of battle, the football field, the field of dreams, the field of 

identities, how if our country loses we shift then to its natural neighbor, 

 

overcoming regional rivalries in the name of a greater continental unity. 

Imagine how Moroccans feel now as they represent their country and all 

of Africa and all migrants too, as many have grown up away from 

 

their kingdom, in exile, when they strap on their boots to play Portugal 

in the next quarterfinal? My documenting pen will dress with them. 

The diaspora team, my friend calls not only Morocco but France, 

 

England and many others. Football is the identity card, 

the passport. Borders are fluid, 2022 composed of a motley crew 

of border crossers, migrant wonders, football envoys.

Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is the newest collection of Indran's own poems. Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.