Poem by

VALERIE VOLK

TUVALU

1: The Cunning of Nostalgia

How quickly one feels rage

at signs of loss,

destruction of a cherished way of life.

A phrase that caught my eye

as Luka meditated on the future

of Tuvalu, his much loved islands

in the South Pacific.

Nine coral atolls, a lifestyle

under threat, as global warming

and encroaching seas presage

obliteration.

A coffee table book,

one to preserve, enhance

idyllic island life. But then

his phrase of warning:

(how easy to blur hardships)

the cunning of nostalgia.

I close the book and look about me.

Around this room photos

of laughing children, smiling parents,

poignant now in this divided house,

where wardrobe shelves loom empty

of her clothes, and bathrooms are devoid

of all that female litter: no more

perfumes, face creams, lipsticks

of the past.

It makes the recognition hard

that here too slowly rising seas

had brought diminishing,

a veiled threat not perceived,

so that reducing shorelines scarcely needed

the final swift tsunami onslaught.

We rage against the losses.

But yet, one yearns the past.

The cunning of nostalgia.

2: So, afterwards …

Then, when the end has come,

and gone,

with water’s rising making

its inexorable way

until the land, this Tuvalu,

with all its colour, beauty,

happy way of life,

is just a memory –

what then? I asked.

Last pages in the book

provide a reassurance.

For newly-offered land in Fiji

will give the needed chance.

New homeland, a new way of life

that can be built in spite of

memories and losses.

Again I look around this room

with all its capturing of days now gone

and know, with quiet certainty,

that here too life is moving on.

For doors have opened to new paths

revealing times to come,

the chances still of unexpected happiness,

of unanticipated joy.

Though always there will be,

as for the Islanders in their new land,

the cunning of nostalgia.