Nicholas Beech
The ghost resolved itself into a tree.1
I am resolved. Listen! I am resolved and now you might hear me, in your head, listen to these ‘words’ - I am resolved.
I have been ‘discovered’. I was nothing - I was named ‘black’ and I have been silent, you could not (would not?) hear me, but as a representation, a representation of a no thing. A blackness. I was black. Now you think I am speaking. Listen! Now you hear me, now that I am in contrast to a landscape of white, of whiteness. You hear me because I am now ‘not white’.
You think these are my ‘words’? These are not my ‘words’; it is my body, my ‘black’ body that is resolved. I spoke before but was silent to you. My speaking was dark and not present to you. Listen! You have taken my body and made it speak, but only in its not whiteness. No, you hear of nothing but your own when I speak.
Now I am amongst the white. Now the white means things because of my blackness - this is what whiteness is. My body and the bodies of my brothers and sisters stand in the legion of white and speak your ‘words’. Where we are ‘lumpen’ and ‘earth’ and ‘stain’, whiteness is ‘clean’ and ‘blank’ and ‘pure’. Where we are silent until we become resolved, the white remain silent even when by our side. We are alone. Listen! Listen to the ‘words’ in your head - accept they are not mine! They are as much the words of the white and only have meaning in our difference.
I am resolved, now you can hear me, now that I do not speak but act a role on your behalf, now that I am not white, now that I am set at odds with whiteness - I am resolved.
Perhaps and surely, I will return to my state, my home. Perhaps at that time, I will be no more against the white, but with all the colours that are forced to speak your words. Perhaps I will be allowed my peace.
For now, I am resolved.
1 "Collins Concise Dictionary: Third Edition" (Glasgow: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995) an example of the fourth definition of resolve - "(usually reflexive) to change; alter..."
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