No’u Revilla — Smoke Screen
Poetry Unbound
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The Importance of Burning and Fire
H.C. and S.C. had a practice of burning fields of sugar cane before the harvest in order to remove the dry leaves. Thousands of hectares of burning every week for months of the year caused all kinds of respiratory issues, especially children. The smoke screen is the man needing his own silence and quiet and isolation at night, smoking a cigarette. I think this poem knows that it's important to look further than just the one thing. This poem could have been a poem of criticism about this father character in it, but it's not. It looks beyond the smoke screen of what might be happening in his life and looks at an entire industry.
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