Many Walls (after Miyó Vestrini)

Don’t take your children to the countryside. Don’t teach them hymns, or tell them stuff about clean water. Make them stand in the rain. Talk about torture, talk in cries and groans. Walk with them for days across the starkest of plains. Then they will know how pointless it is to listen to those who would praise the colour of the sky. They will want to go to Hiroshima, to Seveso, to Fallujah and to Grenfell Tower. There they will stare at you and you will fall to the ground, horrified as anyone who has ever really listened to a bird’s song. They will build many walls. They will make small additions to your memories, will tell small stories about the knowledge of those who know they have nothing.