Butterfly Effect - ressourcesfeministes

Note to Sappho
It’s been a long time since we conversed sitting on the cliff
overlooking the sea as the waves broke on the shore far below.
It was not a day for leaping off cliffs, we had more important
things to do. We plucked petals, she loves me, she loves me not.
We watched butterflies cavorting in the updrafts. You told me
the story of the cow, her path a pattern of lines and curves,
curves and lines, like the words of a poem written back and
forth across a parchment. On that day we had a kind of
innocence.
The world is darker now. Nearly all of us have forgotten our
vows. But you – you were right – you have not been forgotten,
although your poems lie broken, shattered, tiny fragments. Still
they discover you. Just in the last year, another poem unearthed.
Our communities too, are divided by betrayals, envy, lust for
power and distrust of almost everything under the sun.
The passage has been rough. We emerge when the world is safe.
Indeed, perhaps our existence is a measure of happiness. For
when our lives are celebrated, there exists the kind of freedom
for which we have yearned. At other times we raise storms, kick
up eddies of chaos on the edge of the fathers’ psyches. We have
been accused of flight and of depravity. We have been violated
and vilified. And yet there’s a chorus just beyond the limits of
audibility, we know it exists, but who will praise it
Susan Hawthorne
July 2005