From the Depths of My Heart

In Reunion Island, green casuarinas are swept by trade winds. We skim the black sandy earth until we reach the center and come upon a stage, a "ron," where poets succeed one another to deliver their "fonnkers" and perpetuate the Creole language. Their bodies vibrate, their feet stomp the basaltic soil to invoke the secret tale. The poem thus becomes the ritual for an identity quest. Tonight is kabar night "Ôté fonnkézer. Rant dann ron, detak la lang, demay lo kèr!" (Oh Poet. Walk on stage, free your tongue, untangle your heart!) The texts of these poems have urged us to resist for the past forty years. Could their panting souls be whispering the possibility of resilience to our ears?

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