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Braille - The art of feeling
Batsirai Easther Chigama
May 14, 2008

In his silence, his arms beckoned
Welcome B, welcome to my Braille Library
He set his Perkins on his thighs
Shifted to accommodate her, gently
Began to feel the six dots, gently
Like he was afraid to break profound wisdom
THE VIRGIN WORD.
Welcome to my world
Where intimacy with words
Is the feeling love endures
Where real words are carved
Molded in willing arms
Where every finger is an eye
Alert to sounds and symmetry lines
Of each word as it falls on the slate
As fingertips carve dots into words.

As I watched his fingers in concentration
I yearned my man had been blind
Blind to all the words outside Perkins Brailler
Blind to the fallen words easily picked by other men
Picked this one profound word named B
I wish his hand had memorized every curve
Wish he had tried with his hands
To find the meaning of the world
In the valleys and mountains of my body
Calligraphed on my chest: Potential PTA meetings,
Pleasure for a roaming man too.
My shoulders broad and strong
Would have carried both our troubles
The beauty of my mind helping him
Carve words like the man with his Braille

Had he embraced me
Shun those hurtful words fallen
By the way side
Diseased by too many hands unwashed
Touching at will without formula or care
He would be here with me and we would
Be reading the meaning of the world
On the words imprinted on our bodies
His hands all over me with an intensity
Like his life depended on it, then
Seductively slow, gentle and careful
Like the man with his Perkins Brailler
I would shift my thighs to accommodate him
In the seamless valley of my mind,
But he . . .
he picked the fallen words
dropped by other men.

The poet's intent
I wanted to write about HIV & Aids using images and metaphors that have not been explored before. There was a man who used to sit by TM Supermarket in Nelson Mandela now Save Mor reading in Braille. I was captivated by the intimacy in the reading process and how much concentration he showed in order to capture the essence of what he was reading and I it got me thinking, if humans had such a relationship with the ones they love like the one this man had with his words, HIV & AIDS would have a challenge destroying the human race, but then I have always met with audiences that have given this poem quite a number of meanings.

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