"My father was a weaver. He taught me the skill.
My mother sewed ceremonial robes from the brocades
but my father loved tapestry most of all.
I remember as he prepared his weighted loom
he never knew what scene would come from the threads.
In his early years, he loved depictions of battle,
of warriors mounted on sargh, spearing tusked targh
with warriguls circling round the fatally wounded prey
or scenes of Du', tIr in the fields, the shadows of scythes at harvest time
or the great ngem with Sor, light filtering through branches
In his middle years, he changed radically
he began working with patterns and color
things every weaver masters before creating tapestry
My father began weaving in fields of shifting color
he sold fewer tapestries, but he hung them all on our walls
watching the dull colors catch fire in sunrise,
and bright colors fade with age and exposure to light
Then the tide came and looms were abandoned
for war preparations and warmthless turmoil
burning anything for fuel, eating anything for fuel
my mother found work recycling cloth from warrior uniforms
my father worked digging canals by day
weaving on his loom by night, his pockets full of lint
to feed his loom. I learned to weave using my father's scraps
he taught me subtle tricks to make broken thread seamless
to draw the middle color from threads of opposites
to draw patterns from repetition without design
my father taught me to accept the rhythm of the loom
and the instincts of fingers, which sometimes breaks strands
sometimes chooses the wrong thread
sometimes refuses to accept a perfectly woven piece
my first tapestries were unspeakably ugly
made of bloodied cloth, hair of animals, metal wire
but my father saw them and told me, I had a gift
so I continued to weave. We wove standing together
every night, as my mother sang old songs
to keep the beat of the shuttle weaving back and forth.
Canal work is dirty. Digging. Draining. Pouring cement.
They pushed all the workers so hard, in the name of Empire
even the strongest succumbed to exhaustion and broken hands.
My father, unskilled in construction, did the most menial things
transporting dirt in carts, removing rocks from the soil,
mixing cement. He came back, less and less
each night. One night, he went to his old loom
the one his mother taught to him- he threaded the warps
wrapped around the back strap, and began to weave.
His hands were rough and cracked, broken nails and filthy
I don't know what he used, how he found such beautiful SIrgh
the last tapestry he wove, he never finished.
He is buried under the canal.
I weave every night to complete what he started
every morning I undo it
unable to trust the rhythm of the loom.
My mother lived on much longer, by night sewing
by day delivering drinking water to the workers.
She lived on even to learn the new loom machines
that produced thousands of squares of thin cloth
going from worker, to vu'wI' of ten, to nach of one hundred
her uniforms outfitting ten million warriors.
I did not ask her, when she died, what she found in her life.
By Qo'NoSian honor, we lived and rose.
When my mother died, she simply breathed, "At last,"
turned over, and was still.
I- chose this place
not out of exile, but searching for that piece of myself
I lose every day with the sunrise
At night, every thread fits my fingers
I can hear my mother's voice singing
and my father's gentle breathing
as I stand and weave
Come day, the loom stands a menace
the warps frayed from years
of weaving, unweaving
the threads are covered in the oil of my fingers
and I can smell the canal waters in the cloth.
I did not understand until seeing you here
that it is my death I am weaving
every day I undo it in some strange instinct
to find another pattern
another fate to our lives
every night I weave
to regain nameless things lost
in the passage of our time."