Tony de Brum, former vice-president and foreign minister of the Marshall Islands, died yesterday. I was tremendously privileged to have helped him a bit with his campaign against climate change; he was a great man from a small country.
Another much younger leading politician from the Marshall Islands, Mattlan Zackhras, died earlier this month. The Marshallese poet Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner wrote this moving tribute to them both.
What I will tell my daughter about her name
(dedicated to Mattlan and Tony)Peinam
is the name of a land in the Marshalls
where your mother’s family is fromWe named you knowing
it has one of the few pools
of freshwaterI have not been
to PeinamYou are an unknown land
one I will spend my life journeying to seeOur relationship will be salt and waves
but you will always be
refreshing, a thirst
that was quenchedThey say there are no mountains
in the Marshalls
the land that is close
to an expiration dateBut I will tell you the mountains
were men
giants who walked across the sea
sounding the call for the world
to hear our story.
I love Brian Aldiss’s description from thirty years ago of good sf being stories which are not about “What if?” but about “My God, what if…?!”
That’s a really interesting notion. Where did he say it?