Poems by Gwendolyn MacEwen
Letter to a Future Generation
... we did not anticipate you, you bright onesthough some of us saw you kneeling behind our bombs,we did not fervently grow towards youfor most of us grew backwardssowing our seed in the black field of historyavoid monuments, engrave our names beneath your ownfor you have consumed our ashes by nowfor you have one quiet mighty language by nowdo not excavate our citiesto catalogue the objects of our doombut burn all you find to make yourselves room,you have no need of archaeology,your faces are your total historyfor us it was necessary to invent a darkness,to subtract light in order to see,for us it was certain death to know our namesas they were written in the black books of historyI stand with an animal at my left handand a warm, breathing ghost at my rightsaying, Remember that this letter was madefor you to burn, that its meaning liesonly in your burning it,that its lines await your cleansing fire--understand it only insofaras that warm ghost at my right hand breatheddown my blood and for a moment wrote the lineswhile guns sounded from a mythical cityand destroyed the times ...
