The Promise

by Damon Galgut

We sound no different from the other voices, we sound the same and we tell the same stories, in an accent squashed underfoot, all the consonants decapitated and the vowels stove in. Something rusted and rain-stained and dented in the soul, and it comes through in the voice.

But the priest addresses them all indiscriminately, raining Latin upon them without distinction, Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, the opacity of God unites them briefly before His clarities again divide.